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THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
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 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
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 This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the 
 last date stamped under “Date Due.” If not on hold it may be 
 _ renewed by bringing it to the library. 
 
 DATE DATE ) 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 NAME THIS CHILD: 
 
 BH Story of Two. 
 By WILFRID HUGH CHESSON. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown &vo. Cloth, 6s. 
 
 ‘©The novel in question may safely be classed among the most sparkling 
 and entertaining works of fiction that have obtained publicity for many 
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mn CA LT) LIE 
 
 ““When a man can deceive himself no longer, it is time 
 to give up living ” 
 --Tourguénefft 
 
A Great Lie 
 by 
 Wilfrid Hugh Chesson 
 
 Author of ‘ Name this Child? 
 
 BS) 
 
 London 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 MDCCCXCVII 
 
[Ad rights reserved.| 
 
CHAPTERS I.-II. 
 III. 
 IV. 
 
 TIME 
 
 TABLE 
 
 Thursday 
 
 Friday 
 
 Saturday 
 
 Sunday 
 
 Monday 
 
 Tuesday 
 
 Wednesday 
 
 Thursday (the Octave) 
 
To 
 The Memory of7One 
 Wise in the Great Verity of Pain 
 And the Greater Verity of Love, 
 In the Shadow of Whose Passing 
 This Book was Written. 
 
A Great Lie 
 
 es 
 
 Cor Pal PoRi al 
 
 On a Thursday afternoon, in a summer gone 
 by, a youth of eighteen, named Edmund 
 Weaverling, stepped out of a little black 
 cottage into a quiet street, which aspired to 
 the town at one end and the hills at the other, 
 but did not reach either. Its disappointment 
 was consoled by a public-house and a sweet- 
 stuff shop, between which it lay, more dull 
 than idle, with all the materials for a siege 
 within its straggling compass; but its com- 
 mercial eruptions were of no imposing quality, 
 though the missionaries of civilisation had not 
 
 deserted it. The builders were prophesying 
 A 
 
2 A GREAT LIE 
 
 havoc in prettier places by certain scaffoldings 
 and piles of red and ochreous bricks; and the 
 dwelling of Mr Weaverling the fisherman, 
 Edmund’s father, already assumed, with that 
 adjoining it, an anachronistic air. 
 
 The downcast looks of Edmund were bent 
 on concealing from him, as far as possible, that 
 he was exposed to the curiosity of the casual 
 wayfarer. The mitigated ugliness of external 
 things, uglier in the line than any given point 
 upon it, was hostile to him; he felt it, being 
 ugly himself. 
 
 But he was facing them this day for the 
 sake of what lay beyond them and across the 
 hills—the sea. The sea would wash away 
 this muddle of figures in his brain, which 
 passed, from being almost a recreation to the 
 studious youth, into a weariness. 
 
 Meanwhile, there was the Board School, 
 cheerfully unsymmetrical and airily clean, to go 
 by, and his blood seemed to stand at his eyeballs ; 
 and he earnestly and piously hoped towards 
 
 God—it was nearly a prayer—that he might 
 
A GREAT LIE 3 
 
 not be noticed by the lads, released from their 
 books, who loitered at the palings. 
 
 ““Oo-ni!” cried Gotch-one, as he was called, 
 son of a woman who sold hiccuppy teetotal 
 drinks and other delights, within a _ stone’s 
 throw of Mrs Weaverling, her particular 
 friend, 
 
 ‘‘ Ain't Ducksfoot in a hurry?” observed 
 Hallaway, another boy, in mock interrogation. 
 
 “Quack, quack!” said a third. 
 
 “Ffe looks more like a jailbird,” said a 
 fourth, 
 
 “ Amy’s pet,” said a fifth. 
 
 A pebble struck Edmund lightly on the 
 neck, and he turned round and looked with 
 grey-greenish eyes that tried to flash fire and 
 could not upon his tormentors. He tried also 
 to speak, but a gurgle in his throat was all the 
 others heard. 
 
 “Corks! ’ow ’e’d like to kill us!” ejaculated 
 Gotch-one; but Edmund had fled. 
 
 The boys grimaced at him as they watched 
 
 his strange running gestures—his legs twisted 
 
4 A GREAT LIE 
 
 like a pollard oak, his elbows stuck out at his 
 sides. The old joke of Edmund in motion did 
 not diminish with time, but it was too hot to 
 keep pace with him. 
 
 ‘Yes, them cripples is spiteful,” said Halla- | 
 way in answer to Gotch-one. 
 
 “Can't see the use of ’em,’ remarked the 
 other. 
 
 Neither could Edmund; and here and now, 
 as he ceased running and strode across a high 
 meadow to the edge of the sea-cliff, his in- 
 articulate hatred of the schoolboys surged over 
 him clamorously, like a great wave that 
 endeavours to beat down and efface an uncouth 
 and jagged rock. 
 
 But it could not be so. Nay, because he 
 was wrinkled and pitted and swarthy of face, 
 and rough and warty and stumpy of hand, and 
 knock-kneed and splay-footed, he felt himself 
 more keenly than if he had been a popular 
 member of the crowd. These schoolboys were 
 happy in their own society, in their childish 
 
 games, in their careless disregard of anything 
 
A GREAT LIE 3 
 
 that they could not put into their pocket or 
 their stomach; but he, Edmund, required a 
 world to himself. 
 
 And it was pleasant to call the thick wood 
 to the left of him his impenetrable bed-chamber, 
 and to see on the beach spoils of old battles 
 never to be resumed. 
 
 Then he knew that he was weary of the little 
 bedroom at home, with its torn wall-paper, 
 and battered bedstead, and cracked vessels, 
 and the picture of a Germanised saint in a 
 frame. , 
 
 And the mother, who loved him so well that 
 she did not blame herself for bringing him into 
 . human form, faded out of his consciousness: he 
 was all in all to himself. 
 
 With a scramble and a jerk down the 
 descent called Baker’s Gap, he attained the 
 rocky beach, and in face of the shining sea 
 he stripped himself. The boots that leaked, 
 the coarse red socks that discoloured his feet— 
 the surrender of each shabby garment was a 
 
 joy to him ; but, when he stood free of pretence 
 
6 A GREAT LIE 
 
 before the sun, how pitiable a spectacle he 
 seemed ! 
 
 He was not fit to be bared utterly in the 
 light, kinder though it was to him mid un- - 
 protesting beauty than spiteful mediocrity. 
 The thought that had partly concealed him 
 by those despicable vestments was pitiful, 
 motherly. 
 
 “Tf I were only different!” sighed Edmund. 
 “The body is everything.” 
 
 He had been told to live for his soul, and 
 he laughed a little, reflecting that it was 
 his soul which cried out fer a_ beautiful 
 dwelling-place: his unhappy, discontented, 
 shrinking self was his unhappy, discontented, 
 shrinking soul. 
 
 “Qh!” he cried, as he lay among the sea- 
 weeds, ‘‘I would give everything they pray 
 for down there for the straightness of an 
 arrow, for the strength of a man.” 
 
 He felt, somehow, that God had ignored him, 
 that He might have stopped these boys, or 
 
 turned his footsteps other ways, and did not; 
 
A GREAT LIE ° 
 
 or, rather, he chose to feel this. He had 
 prayed passionately for himself in that little 
 seaside chapel whither his thoughts tended— 
 and himself was still praying. He insisted that 
 his prayer should have had a distinct answer 
 by now. What was the importance of God’s 
 actual work for him, compared with that which 
 he besought of God, he did not trouble to 
 consider. His ego drowned memory of twenty 
 other prayers than his in that very chapel. 
 He did not even acknowledge advantage in 
 possessing a finer brain, a wider information, 
 than his superiors in body. “What is the 
 use,” he said, “ when my tongue is glued to my 
 mouth?” He was consistent im his regret over 
 lost opportunities of saying cruel, clever things. 
 
 Sea-ripples that had travelled the world over, 
 and were still fresh and vivid as a sunbeam, ran 
 round him and did not despise him, and the far- 
 away blue of the sky gazed placidly upon him 
 as one under the hospitality of the All-Good, 
 and the semicircular cliffs that held him as in a 
 bowl filled with the sea did not rebuke him, and 
 
8 A GREAT LIE 
 
 such faint wind as there was did not laugh at 
 him. Edmund accepted the tacit permission of 
 Nature, and dozed away. Suddenly, a heavy 
 and sharp stone that had gathered impetus by 
 flight struck him sharply on the forehead. To | 
 the moment of the shock of impact, there 
 succeeded a few minutes of breathless and 
 involuntary action, during which the very fibres 
 of his being seemed to loosen and _ separate 
 from him; yet he continued to lie still—stiller 
 than ever. | 
 Then, having done with sleep, as it seemed 
 to him, he felt an impending presence that 
 filled him with awe. 
 ‘“‘ Fdmund,” said a low voice, ‘“‘ you know me 
 well. Am I like you?” | 
 Edmund rose, and confronted the speaker. 
 Eyes of darkest emerald shone over him, 
 from whose depths the thoughts would never 
 appear, and the dreams might never entirely 
 rise. Under them, the red lips symbolized he 
 seeker and begetter of fleshly pleasures, even 
 
 while the mouth, indrawn at the corner, 
 | 
 
A GREAT LIE 9 
 
 betokened a singular disdain of mankind; over 
 them, the white brows, crowned with yellow 
 curls dishevelled by the sea-spray, were firm 
 as marble and cold as ice. The azure veins 
 ran up his outstretched arm like floating, 
 creeping weeds seen lustreful beneath the 
 unruffled lucency of the mid-channel waters, 
 and the nails upon the delicate tapering 
 hands were like pink shells lying fresh and 
 wet on the beach. 
 
 Yet Edmund, dwarfed beneath him, was 
 less ill seen, here and now, than before the 
 world of other men; and the thought crept 
 into his heart, and lingered there, that this 
 being, sparkling yet with salt-drops (of 
 eternity, may be) of which now one reluc- 
 tantly faded or fell, and now another, was 
 here by right of a common meaning in their 
 lives. 
 
 And still the stranger’s question remained 
 unanswered : ‘“Am I like you?” 
 
 “No,” said Edmund slowly; “you are 
 
 ) 
 
 not. 
 
Ke) A GREAT LIE 
 
 i Vet lususee,* said. theystrainger sites 
 be that you err.” 
 
 “Tmpossible!” cried Edmund. 
 
 “Softly,” replied the stranger. ‘‘ Whom 
 would you wish to be like?” 
 
 “Like syours 
 
 “To look at?” 
 
 Crlomookiat 
 
 LOMO ra 
 
 Edmund made no answer to this question. 
 He ‘merely»’said < } You shavemnot) come mrs 
 taunt me, I know.” 
 
 “No,” said the stranger, ‘‘I have not. 
 Only Wry-Face taunts.” 
 
 “You have come to give?” 
 
 ‘‘ Perhaps.” 
 
 Just then three people passed the beach 
 whereon they conversed, but paid no heed to 
 them. 
 
 “After you with the catapult,” said a voice 
 from the cliff. 
 
 ‘Wait till they pass, can’t you?” said another. 
 
 Edmund distressfully sought for a retreat. 
 
A GREAT LIE Ul 
 
 “Never mind,” said the stranger; ‘‘ they 
 cannot see you.” 
 
 ‘But I am in front of them.” 
 
 “Mere man never saw or heard such an 
 one as you,’ said the stranger, and Edmund 
 shuddered slightly. 
 
 “Where do you come from?” demanded 
 Edmund. 
 
 ‘There is no sense in that question,” replied 
 the stranger. “I have no constituency. I 
 represent myself.” 
 
 “Then what is that ?”’ asked Edmund. 
 
 “1 should change somewhat ere the words 
 were out of my mouth. I can now, as ever, 
 only say what I was at some chosen moment. 
 Don’t stare. Iam not singular in that. Now 
 as to yourself, what were you doing last 
 Wednesday afternoon ?” 
 
 Edmund recalled that he had made a dis- 
 tribution down the Martello Terrace of a 
 tract entitled, ‘“‘ What shall I do to be saved?” 
 which involved the collection of a tract en- 
 
 titled ‘“‘ A brand plucked from the burning.” 
 
12 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘“] was changing tracts,” he said. 
 ‘From house to house ? ” 
 
 Lm Sa! 
 
 ‘Ah! that wanted pluck, did it not?” 
 
 Edmund recalled the fact that a door had 
 been slammed in his face, and that the Martello 
 Atheist—a source of fearful pride to his kins- 
 men—had dubbed him ‘‘a young swine.” 
 
 ‘That was soul triumphing over surface,” 
 observed the stranger. ‘Your soul grew 
 under the insult. To-day you are not so 
 plucky : surface triumphs over soul. And I 
 really believe it is | who am to blame.” 
 
 “And who were you, last Wednesday ?” 
 sneered Edmund. 
 
 The stranger frowned. ‘I was not chang- 
 ing tracts,” he said. ‘I was changing hearts ; 
 some would say breaking them. I used to 
 like the kind that are worn on the sleeve 
 best. You can buy them. The deep ones 
 are troublesome.” 
 
 ‘What were you five minutes ago?” said 
 
 Edmund, lost in thought. 
 
A GREAT LIE 13 
 
 “The spirit of satire.” 
 
 “ You did come to taunt me, then?” 
 
 “By no means. I was in a mood of sacri- 
 fice, or of expiation, or of irony, or of com- 
 passion: it matters not. I may stand before 
 you with sinful Memory raining frogs and 
 toads from my lips, and you will still applaud 
 ‘the glory that was Greece.’ Yes, if I sang— 
 the great peacock test—it would still be the 
 same. ... Come, own that you continue to 
 envy my good looks.” 
 
 “| do,” reiterated Edmund, though feebly. 
 _. “ Then wish for them,” said the stranger. 
 
 Edmund wished as deeply as he knew how 
 to, over and over again in his heart; but 
 when he looked at his hands and his feet, 
 there was no change that he could see. And, 
 all the while, the stranger gazed sardonically 
 at him with eyes whose depths receded from 
 his depths, taking a message with them. 
 The sea had retreated, and they stood drily, 
 save for the fine-crushed pebbles that remem- 
 
 bered their lesson. Something of lustre had 
 
14 A GREAT LIE 
 
 departed from the stranger—perhaps the wan- 
 ing sun drew it from him; but white as 
 porphyry kissed into life, he was still fairer 
 than honest sinners hope to be. 
 
 “Your wish is not strong enough,” he 
 said in a thrilling voice with tears in it, 
 mingled with subtle laughter; ‘‘consider what 
 you have been: thin and ill and ugly—piti- 
 able, but unloved. Past the river are asphodels 
 white as snow. Your hope has been that 
 the white hand of love may pluck you there. 
 But I tell you that on English meads are 
 other asphodels—not so white, but more for- 
 tunate. ‘Theirs is not the clammy comfort of 
 the immortal shades: they are worn on 
 human bosoms; and if it be true that they 
 fade and die, it is because their eternity is 
 compressed into finite hours. The final thrill 
 of joy is the suspicion of pain. Taste it, 
 wish it—you who have never been a man.” 
 
 Edmund wished again, but still there was 
 no change that he could see. 
 
 “You are too timid,” said the stranger 
 
A GREAT LIE 15 
 
 huskily, for his voice had lost in tone, and he 
 shivered slightly, and colour had fled from his 
 face. ‘You are too timid. You must wish 
 passionately for yourself. You must wish 
 against other wishes—wishes that would make 
 princes of other men. You must wish against 
 them that insulted you, the idle that sneered 
 at you, the well-off who preached their content- 
 ment at you, the sensitive-selfish who shunned 
 _ you, the philosophical-selfish who ignored you.” 
 
 He stopped. Edmund did not ask him 
 to go on; but he wished strenuously that his 
 enemies might be put to confusion. 
 
 And when he looked again, it seemed as 
 though he had returned after long absence 
 from one known as an ideal, and now unknown 
 as an unveiled reality; for he was now level 
 with the stranger’s head, and upon it there 
 was no crown of gold, but only hair like unto 
 his. But the stranger’s eyes were not less 
 penetrating, and Edmund felt fear of them for 
 the first time since meeting their gaze. 
 
 He eould see the change in himself quite 
 
16 A GREAT LIE 
 
 distinctly. He was vigorous in an uncouth 
 way : he could have quaffed ale, sung songs, 
 or roughly embraced a woman who had seen 
 the world by a minute process of being seen by 
 it in the darkness as well as the light. And 
 then, stranger still, he felt a new language 
 steal into his head to explain these animal 
 impulses, nay, to render the deeds wrought 
 under them tellable and attractive. Oxe must 
 vealise one’s self. 
 
 Yet he was envious of those fine symmetries 
 which still distinguished the stranger. 
 
 “It is accomplishing,” he said; ‘‘neverthe- 
 leservital| 
 
 ‘All will be accomplished,” said the stranger. 
 “You must go on wishing. Wish through 
 all and against all, till your wish brings fruit 
 as well as flower. Wish, despite the evangelist 
 who prayed for you last Sunday, despite the 
 folk at home who love you.” 
 
 ‘Tt is impossible,” said Edmund. 
 
 The stranger's face was lit momentarily by 
 
 a smile. Then he stretched forth his hand 
 
A GREAT LIE 17 
 
 and touched Edmund’s wrist. ‘Who gave 
 you the bruise that I see there?” he asked. 
 
 Thereat the flush of shame darkened 
 Edmund’s face, and his pity for himself was 
 as intense as though he were somebody else. 
 His father had beaten him the day before, 
 without considering his almost adult age. 
 His own father had been misled by his 
 stunted height, just like those schoolboys 
 who would never regard him as a man. He 
 hated those schoolboys: yet they might be 
 excused. They had resented his ugliness as 
 an impertinence, and they were blatantly irre- 
 ligious among themselves, Why, then, should 
 he not hate his father, who had made sore one 
 of the few sound parts of the body he had 
 misbegotten ; and on religious grounds, too! 
 Surely his father had done him the great 
 wrong of beating religion out of him. “It 
 flew like dust out of a carpet,” thought 
 Edmund, with sinister indifference to his own 
 profanity. 
 
 ‘‘Well?” said the stranger. 
 B 
 
18 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘It is counted hard,” said Edmund bitterly, 
 “to wish against one’s father.” 
 
 e Loas, hard?) \seard Othevistrangen sar wie 
 your poor little. wish can do no _ harm. 
 Though it break through other human 
 wishes, it is but a spent wave at the last. 
 What is a life of your wishing in comparison 
 with the eternity of God’s? But against 
 this wish of yours He does not wish; and 
 I make way for it. That is to say,” he 
 proceeded, in tones of mockery rather than 
 malice, ‘‘I lay aside, for the time being, my 
 favourite Greek philosophy, and make a 
 pretence —so!—of giving you space and 
 opportunity for dienes Come, come; 
 don’t be sceptical. Return to childhood. To 
 enter even the little Playground of Sense you 
 must be born again. Wish boldly then, and 
 wish well!” 
 
 His speech made Edmund feel giddily 
 
 free. In other words, his religion was no- 
 where to be found. He wished for the fourth 
 
 time, therefore, with greater ease than before ; 
 
A GREAT LIE ‘ 19 
 
 and when he again inspected his body some- 
 thing of clownishness had fallen from him; 
 his eyes were clearer, and he knew that he 
 understood as well as loved beautiful things. 
 But the stranger had grown shorter than he 
 was, and Edmund thought he seemed de- 
 formed. Still, his hands remained delicate 
 and Edmund’s continued to be coarse, and 
 unduly hollow of palm. 
 
 “You have not done wishing,” said the 
 stranger. ‘‘Hasten: twilight has fallen. My 
 bed in hell is ready. You must wish for 
 yourself, despite all, despite her—your fate— 
 and me.” 
 
 Edmund shrank, momentarily, with terror of 
 himself. It was not hard to neglect the God 
 in Christ, but it was dangerous to lose trace of 
 the humanity in himself. 
 
 “Despite her . . . and you; you have been 
 kind.” , 
 
 ‘“For me, you see how I have changed, or at 
 least the 2//uszon of me (to humour Parmenides, 
 
 hat foolish fellow)” said the stranger, half 
 
20 A GREAT LIE 
 
 sadly, half scornfully. “Come,” he added, “do 
 you love her well enough to wish to see her 
 happy with another man, her—found, orto find 
 —whom you shall desire above all besides, if - 
 she could not be so happy with you? Do you 
 love her so well?” 
 
 “No,” said Edmund. 
 
 “Then wish!” cried the stranger. 
 
 Edmund wished, and knew he stood beautiful 
 as a sea-god through the dusk of evening. 
 He felt the stream of new life like perfect wine 
 in his veins, and all the suppleness and firm- 
 ness, and trueness of line and curve that he 
 had longed for were his. And beneath him 
 was a dwarf, a poor, vile thing whose eyes 
 alone redeemed it. Did it live, or was 
 it a phantasmal symbol of his past? He 
 felt inclined to kill it. He was strong enough. 
 
 But he was too glorious for such deeds. 
 His feet were fleet as quicksilver; his breath 
 was the air made languorous; his thoughts 
 were music—they had neither beginning nor 
 
 end. 
 
A GREAT LIE 21 
 
 teense no past, and |. . ah! ‘the thing 
 had vanished. What a horrible hole that was 
 in its forehead ! 
 
 Twelve hours before, and miles beyond the 
 visual limit of his questioning eyes, the 
 flaracastle had gone down with all hands 
 on board. 
 
CHARI DEK AE 
 
 Now Edmund felt very uneasy, for he stood 
 here naked and destitute, as though he had 
 landed on an unfamiliar planet. He had, 
 indeed, strayed past the common round, and 
 changed beyond recognition. 
 
 Fair English youths had returned from the 
 East bearded and bronzed; fleshless bones had 
 clothed themselves during one sea voyage 
 between two continents: such things were 
 current gossip. But no ear would listen to 
 the tale of a man made newly, between the 
 sunset and the moonrise. 
 
 Obviously, lies were required of him; and 
 it irritated him to reflect on the fact, which 
 implied a certain unsoundness of intellect in 
 
 making use of such a word as ‘“‘lies,” and a 
 22 
 
A GREAT LIE 23 
 
 deplorable want of culture in a world which 
 exacted a history of the beautiful, and could not 
 be relied on to support it, from sheer love and 
 fear of its rarity. 
 
 It was, of course, impossible to wear the 
 garments that he had cast off: it was im- 
 possible to think of soiling this splendid new 
 body with such reminiscent rags. 
 
 Mmemstepped across the shingle to ‘the 
 water's edge, among the rocks. 
 
 Suddenly he heard his father crying afar 
 Om Eddie) Eddie, Eddie!” 
 
 Edmund would have fied, or, again, he 
 would have sprung forward crying “ Father!” 
 but he was interrupted by a feeling of 
 strange isolation, of newness. This man was 
 not his father now. Nay, he felt angry with 
 him as a sinner who had caused the sinless 
 to bring forth after his kind. It was all very 
 well to get converted after having done your 
 mischief. 
 
 Intellectually, as well as in body, Edmund 
 
 had changed. He was looking at things, not 
 
24 A GREAT LIE 
 
 living in them, as he had done. Everything 
 that remained to be done or said would be 
 done or said with new gestures and new 
 words. His head was full of repartees for 
 occasions that would never arise, and instantly 
 ready for those that should. His body was 
 full of rhythms for operatic scenes that the 
 world might never evolve, but it moved ap- 
 propriately to the living hour. Lying was, 
 indeed, a fine art: sit was, stagecraftiiemse 
 stood next to the attitude of pure contempla- 
 tion, for which it was the substitute. An old 
 prejudice lingered stupidly, inviting a buffet, but 
 it should go in peace: its naiveté redeemed 
 it. His new body made him generous: a 
 lie so splendid laughed at blame. People 
 should crave the very petals of that lie. 
 
 “Sir,” he said to the calling man, “I saw 
 hands go up in the air. I tried to save him. 
 Was he your boy? I am very sorry.” 
 
 ‘“These be his clothes,” said Mr Weaver- 
 ling. 
 
 “It was but an hour ago,” proceeded 
 
A GREAT LIE 25 
 
 Edmund. “I am a good swimmer. Had 
 it been possible to save him I would have 
 done it, but there must have been a hole in 
 the beach.” 
 
 “Ay, ay, sir. I was always warnin’ him.” 
 
 “T would have told people of this before, 
 but no one passed, and all that could be 
 done I did. I have been wading and wading, 
 but it is no use.” 
 
 Heaven was now filmed by brooding clouds, 
 and Mr Weaverling did not mark the dry- 
 ness of Edmund. He only said: ‘‘God bless 
 you, sir, and thank God, my lad was a good 
 lad!” 
 
 “And his name was... ?” 
 
 “Edmund Weaverling, sir.” 
 
 “Edmund is my name.” After a pause 
 he added: ‘‘Someone has stolen my clothes!” 
 
 ‘‘Where, if I may be so bold, do you stop, 
 sir?” said Mr Weaverling. 
 
 “Nowhere,” replied Edmund. ‘“I am as 
 strange on earth as your son is strange in 
 
 heaven.” 
 
26 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Well, sir; you cannot stop here. I will get 
 you some things.” 
 
 In the fishmarket, where the harbour in- 
 terrupted the confused succession of rocks, 
 was the little zinc building in which the 
 Weaverlings worshipped God. Half consisted 
 of the chapel, half of a coffee-bar. It was 
 thither that Mr Weaverling repaired for 
 clothing. 
 
 Edmund remained, shivering, and, in his 
 forlornness, he sang, almost mechanically, a few 
 words of a hymn; and he was awed by the 
 sweetness of his own voice. He was awed 
 just as he had been when he had prayed more 
 earnestly than usual, and he had known that 
 the light had burned from within and shone 
 from without, and was ashamed of an hour 
 to which he would bring so few as worthy. 
 Therefore, his utterance saddened him as it 
 drifted over the waste of sand and shingle, 
 where lay the ungathered weedy harvest of the 
 sea’s tillage. 
 
 Then came a moment of divine exaltation : 
 
A GREAT LIE 27 
 
 “T belong to these things. I am part of 
 Nature. I have forgotten how to be ugly.” 
 
 He lay, dreamily, on piles of bladder-wrack, 
 absolutely alone; and, in this hour of pure 
 self - consciousness, careless whether or not 
 he returned to the loud and incongruous 
 world. 
 
 Presently the fisherman returned with some 
 rough garments. 
 
 «© Put these on, sir,” he said, ‘‘they’re better 
 than naught.” | 
 
 Thereat, as though the guregle and splash and 
 lisp of the sea had stung him with an idea, he 
 ran into it, and waded neck-deep. 
 
 Edmund, while occupied in preparing him- 
 self for eyes unused to living statuary, gazed 
 at his father with remorse mingled with 
 amazement. 
 
 When, for a moment, the waves showed 
 blank where the seeker had fallen in his quest, 
 he ran down to them in a passion of fear, and 
 then, as his father reappeared, this gave place 
 
 to the irritation of a liar betrayed by his 
 
28 A GREAT LIE 
 
 affections, and he cried out: ‘‘It’s no use 
 looking.” 
 
 “Ay, you can say that,” was the reply. 
 
 Edmund was silent, but after a few minutes 
 more of fruitless search, his father landed, 
 feeling feverish and ill in his dripping clothes, 
 and keeping his teeth firmly set to prevent 
 them from chattering. 
 
 “Tt beats me,” said the fisherman slowly, 
 waving his hand at the sea. 
 
 ‘So does the earth at the last,” said Edmund. 
 “T am sorry, by the way,” he continued 
 abruptly, ‘“‘to trouble you on my account, but 
 I must tell you that I have no money and no 
 friends in these parts.” 
 
 “You're welcome to bed and board with 
 me, so long as you've need,” said the fisher- 
 man. 
 
 ‘“Thank you so much,” said Edmund. ‘You 
 see my money was in my pocket, and the 
 thief has that with the clothes.” 
 
 They walked fast and firmly, the fisherman 
 
 with the nervous haste of one struck with Icy 
 
A GREAT LIE 29 
 
 cold, Edmund with an effervescence of sheer 
 health which suggested that he could fly if 
 he chose. 
 
 As they scaled the winding staircase of 
 the cliff, the fisherman inquired: ‘ Where, 
 if I may be so bold, do you come from, 
 Sie 
 
 “In putting that question, you are bolder 
 than I,” said Edmund. ‘‘I am as alien here as 
 -a meteor blown out of the sky.” 
 
 ‘““T suppose you grew up,” remarked the 
 fisherman weariedly. 
 
 “Flew up were better,” replied Edmund. 
 “Tt was all so sudden. It only took eighteen 
 years to make ME. I burst like a chicken 
 out of my shell—a particularly ugly shell, if 
 I may speak as an amateur,” he added fiercely. 
 “T have not seen many people. I lived 
 mainly on a desert island.” 
 
 “T never had no learnin’ myself,” said the 
 fisherman meditatively, wondering whether he 
 was talking to a confirmed liar or a speaker 
 
 of parables. 
 
30 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “ Neither had I,” vouchsafed Edmund, ‘or 
 my present acquisition would not have seemed 
 so sudden.” 
 
 “Why,” thought the fisherman, “does this 
 fellow talk this rot to me when my heart is 
 breaking ?”” 
 
 “Why,” thought Edmund in a fury,. ‘can’t 
 he read my face and see mein it? But, no, 
 he would have given his eyes for a sight of 
 the carcass that misrepresented me. Good 
 God, for eighteen years, he has never seen 
 me—only that!” 
 
 Nigh the fisherman’s cottage were loitering 
 a few small boys—persecutors in the old days. 
 One of them was bending over the parapet 
 of a stream that was uncertain whether to 
 pose as a brook or a sewer. Viewing it in 
 the former capacity, the urchin was trying to 
 fish in it. 
 
 “That's the kind of boy, I imagine,’ 
 
 ’ said 
 Edmund, ‘‘who cries ‘humpback!’ if he sees 
 one stooping, or throws a stone at a cripple, 
 
 or makes mouths at an ugly face.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 31 
 
 “Ah, it’s a boy’s way,’ sighed the fisher- 
 man. ‘“‘My Teddy now—” 
 
 ‘“Was one of these?” 
 
 “No, one of them cripples.” 
 
 “There is no distinction,’ said Edmund. 
 “The little sot there, sniffing in the sewer, 
 and thinking he’s loafing like a man of the 
 world, is the father of the other sort—sot and 
 sewer combined.” 
 
 The fisherman gave him a look in which 
 there was more sternness than wonderment. 
 As for Edmund, he took a fearful joy in 
 opening old floodgates and setting impatient 
 torrents free. He reflected that for eighteen 
 years he had not dared to speak out to his 
 father; but times had changed at length, 
 thank God! ‘There was falsetto in that grate- 
 ful exclamation, but, x’zwforte, times had 
 changed. A new grace was established, and 
 that he was not able to assume it quite as 
 naturally as the tapering spire of gold, the 
 lily-cup, hardly mattered. For the nonce, it 
 
 was a pleasure to revert to the buried past, 
 
32 A GREAT LIE 
 
 to defend the dead self as some loving twin- 
 brother thereto. 
 
 His courage sank a little at the cottage door 
 of his home. 
 
 ‘“‘Go in first,” he said to the fisherman, ‘‘ and 
 tell what you must. Fetch me in afterwards, if 
 your wife can bear it.” 
 
 Mr Weaverling obeyed him, and waiting 
 outside, Edmund heard a woman’s wail: “O 
 it was crool—too crool! It ain't true. It 
 Canc bew 
 
 Anon the door was opened, and, stooping as 
 hitherto he had only seen his father do, 
 Edmund advanced. 
 
 “You was kind to my Teddy, sir,” said his 
 mother. 
 
 ‘1 wanted to be,” said Edmund. 
 
 “Have some tea, sir. There be some 
 feather buns. Do you like them, sir?” 
 
 “Of all things.” 
 
 Edmund knew his mother so well that he 
 had no hesitation in talking of the subject of 
 her grief. 
 
A GREAT LIE 33 
 
 fate) was!) a cripple, 1) heard,’ he) said. 
 “May you not thank God?” 
 
 “«The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
 away; blessed be the name of the Lord,’” 
 quoted the fisherman. 
 
 “Do not let us talk nonsense about God,” 
 said Edmund. ‘‘God gives life and beauty, 
 and the means of sustaining both. But for 
 God’s sake, don’t fasten on Him the vile and 
 misshapen forms under which life is tortured till 
 death is a comforter—an angel of light. If this 
 child of yours ever suffered in his body, if he was 
 ever cowed and shrinking, if men were unkind 
 to him, if he thanked God for death, I swear 
 to you that he never thanked God for life.” 
 
 ‘We never swear in this house,” said 
 the fisherman. | 
 
 “T beg your pardon,” said Edmund. ‘I 
 come from France, where there are five and 
 twenty blasphemies suitable for people who 
 don’t swear.” 
 
 “France ain't a desert island,” remarked 
 
 the fisherman austerely. 
 C 
 
34 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘“You remember too well,” said Edmund. 
 He sat staring at the fire and smiling at 
 his own lies, his plate still full of feather 
 bun, and his replenished cup waiting for 
 him. 
 
 “ Dick!” he said wheedlingly, addressing 
 the cat, who was black and sleek and solidly 
 made, and Mrs Weaverling wondered how 
 he knew its name. 
 
 Edmund would have stroked the top of 
 this amiable animal’s head, but Dick would 
 have none of him, and retreated. Edmund 
 grew sombre ; it was only yesterday that he 
 had laid his cheek against Dick’s fur—Dick 
 who never laughed at him or flattered those 
 who did. 
 
 Soon Mrs Gotch entered, her form of 
 billowy fatness leaving no room even for 
 the fine shades. 
 
 ‘Well, how’s Teddy?” she inquired breath- 
 lessly. hy 
 ‘‘ Dead,” said the fisherman. 
 
 Edmund had to tell the fiction which he 
 
A GREAT LIE 35 
 
 had invented all over again to the mother 
 and Mrs Gotch. 
 
 ‘And did he say anything?” 
 
 Moves; he said,’ “My ~ God, ‘you're’ very 
 good!’” 
 
 “That's like Ted,” said the fisherman. 
 “May we all die as fit! Well, he’s in the 
 Golden Streets, that’s sure. ‘In My Father’s 
 house are many mansions.’” 
 
 ‘Some are used to cottages,” remarked 
 Edmund; “but these Golden Streets, do 
 you think they are finer than the sea—the 
 ‘pavement of amber’—the land of meadow 
 and wood and spring, where there are no 
 streets?” 
 
 “The sea shall become ‘as the blood of 
 a dead man’; the ‘third part of trees,’ shall 
 be burnt up, and ‘all green grass’,” said the 
 fisherman. 
 
 “A change for the worse, I apprehend,” said 
 Edmund, “‘though decidedly effective. There's 
 a transpontine touch about the blood which 
 
 should please the children.” 
 
36 A GREAT LIE 
 
 No one understood what he meant, but 
 the fisherman’s intuitive dislike of him 
 deepened. 
 
 A look passed between him and Mrs. 
 Weaverling which seemed to indicate: ‘The 
 Jebusite is in the camp of the Lord.” 
 
 “You read the Book, I hope,” said the 
 fisherman. 
 
 “Tt is read to me very often,” said Edmund ; 
 ‘that is one of my privileges. There was 
 One who healed the lame and palsied, and 
 made the blind to see. It sounds harder to 
 do that than to turn fair water into blood.” 
 
 “You believe in God, I presume,” said 
 the fisherman. 
 
 “Are not the days of the week called 
 after Him, in His character of sun and moon, 
 Tiu, Oden, Thor, Freya, and Saturn respec- 
 tively?” said Edmund. 
 
 A dark suspicious look mantled the fisher- 
 man’s face. Then he took his Bible and 
 began to read of the Resurrection. 
 
 STtvisvall s truely every | biti ob Mien miners 
 
A GREAT LIE 37 
 
 rupted Edmund, ‘‘and the sea hides nothing 
 —nothing.” 
 
 “Let us pray,’ said the fisherman, and 
 he and his wife knelt on the floor, but 
 Edmund continued sitting. 
 
 What was it his father was saying? 
 
 “O God, You are very mighty, and our 
 hearts go out to You, and we love You so, 
 come life, come death. And You have 
 taken away our son, Edmund Weaverling, 
 and we thank You, though we're cut up. 
 He was our only one. Forgive us, Lord, 
 for missing him. We know he’s all right 
 now, but. we do miss him, and we want You 
 to show us that he zs all right, some day. 
 We thank You that our friend tells us that 
 he died trusting. The Blood of the Lamb is 
 enough, O Lord! It cleanseth: it is like 
 the sea——’” 
 
 ‘* Like the sea,” echoed Edmund. 
 
 “Bless my dear wife,” continued the fisherman, 
 ‘and bless our friend, and let us go on trust- 
 
 ing. The peace of God be with us all. Amen.” 
 
38 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Amen,” said Edmund. 
 
 Edmund slept in his old bed that night. 
 No dreams marred his deep tranquillity, for 
 he was drenched in the spirit of satire. 4 
 
 “The Lord forgive me, but I could have 
 knocked him down,” said the fisherman in 
 the adjoining room. 
 
 “The Lord made him too beautiful for 
 
 that,” said his wife. 
 
ChAr LE Ry 
 
 Ir was with feelings of repugnance that 
 Edmund donned on Friday the makeshift of 
 the previous evening for lack of other apparel. 
 His tender skin revolted against its roughness. 
 
 Five o'clock of a sweet and _ silent 
 morning was striking with singular distinct- 
 ness in the drowsy ears of the town, and 
 ere the hours were told, Edmund was in 
 the kitchen. 
 
 The dead ash in the wide grate with its 
 gaping chimney, the unconsidered crumbs of 
 feather-bun on the table, lay powerless to 
 depress him under the blaze of the risen 
 sun. But, more than all, his miraculous 
 youth shone in his hair and his eyes, creating 
 
 a prospect of pleasure and ease wherever he 
 39 
 
40 A GREAT LIE 
 
 gazed,| ‘The fire had)burned) out iny the 
 grate, the meal was a crumby remnant on 
 the table, but his youth might never fade 
 and die, his feast was inexhaustible—it was 
 the world and all that therein is. 
 
 It was out of the sheer exuberance of 
 his joy, rather than any kindness, that he 
 seized the poker, and raked out the ashes, 
 intending to make a fire. 
 
 He was interrupted by his mother: ‘‘ This 
 work is not for the likes of you,” she said. 
 
 “You are mistaken, Mrs Weaverling,” he 
 replied, ‘“‘unless you mean that I ought to 
 be picking oakum.” 
 
 “You seem so grand,” she said. 
 
 “How?” he asked; then, suddenly, he 
 shrank back a pace or two with an ejacula- 
 tion of dismay. 
 
 “Lor! it won’t hurt you! It’s only a 
 blackjack,” cried Mrs Weaverling. “My 
 Teddy wur never afraid of ’em. He made 
 ’em little kennels out of paper.” 
 
 It appeared | that he). used to’ exclaim, 
 
A GREAT LIE 41 
 
 ‘““Mummer, here’s a ickle beetle!” when he 
 was but six. 
 
 Edmund stopped the flood of reminiscence 
 by inquiring after Mr Weaverling. 
 
 “He's right poorly, I’m _ thinking,” said 
 the woman. “JI never had a wink of sleep 
 last night, listening to his coughing. Hell 
 have to lie abed, I reckon.” 
 
 “JT am very sorry. Is he awake?” 
 
 yes, sir.” 
 
 wan tesee him?” 
 
 ‘‘He’s in bed, sir.” 
 
 ‘‘T must see him.” 
 
 His tone was peremptory, and he was 
 conscious that by merely looking at his 
 mother he compelled her obedience. 
 
 He followed her to the bedroom where 
 the fisherman lay. 
 
 ‘‘T am so sorry to see you look so ill,” he 
 said, ‘‘you must on no account go out to- 
 day.” 
 
 ‘‘T must, sir,’ replied the fisherman, 
 
 gruffly. 
 
42 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Vou cannot,” replied Edmund. ‘Listen, 
 I will attend to your boat in the morning, 
 taking people out for rowing, and you shall 
 stop in bed.” 
 
 ‘Cant be: done; sirs 
 
 “Nonsense!” said Edmund, “it must.” 
 
 “Tt’s my affair, sir.” 
 
 “Give me three minutes,” said Edmund. 
 “You suspect me. My tongue is a needle. 
 The other end of the needle is in my heart 
 —that is why. But look in my face and 
 tell me if there is any evil there.” 
 
 The fisherman looked at him with keen, 
 small eyes: 
 
 “Vou. are not vain?” he asked, with a 
 vague sneer. 
 
 “Vanity implies thinking. I never think,” 
 said Edmund. 
 
 “Time to begin,’ 
 
 b] 
 
 said the fisherman. 
 
 “JT will, when instinct fails me,’ said 
 Edmund lightly. ‘But to the point. Is 
 evil ugly? Then I tell you that I revolt 
 
 against all ugliness.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 43 
 
 ‘‘ Absalom was fair,” remarked the fisher- 
 man, 
 
 “But his sin, my friend, was designed to 
 punish his father. The economy of God 
 makes sin indispensable as salt. And we are 
 superstitious about spilling salt.” 
 
 With a sharp look, half-angry and _half- 
 weary, the fisherman put one foot out of his 
 _ bed. 
 
 Step a) moment, said Edmund. ‘ Re- 
 member you are ill.” 
 
 “What then?” said the fisherman. 
 
 “Tf anything happened to you, what would 
 become of your wife? To go out would be 
 to tempt Providence. I do not know the 
 theology of that temptation, but, as you know, 
 the tempter gets the worst of it. Now, I insist 
 on doing work for you this day. I have eaten 
 your bread and prayed your prayers. I will 
 not wrong you. You shall not say ‘No’.” 
 
 The fisherman was, in truth, too ill to 
 disobey. His head ached; his breath was 
 
 painful. 
 
44 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘So be it,” he murmured. 
 
 “But I must borrow your clothes,” said 
 Edmund, and then and there he proceeded 
 to put them on. | 
 
 Watching him drowsily, the fisherman was 
 astonished by the girth of his limbs and their 
 surpassing whiteness. 
 
 ‘You weren't never on a desert island,” 
 he said; ‘‘ you never growed out of nothing.” 
 
 “Unlike Enoch,” said Edmund vaguely, 
 “T started by walking with God. With 
 regard to desert islands, I was eighteen years 
 on one, inhabited mainly by a vicious kind 
 of intelligent monkey, not quite prehensile, 
 but nearly so. We met some coming home 
 last night. Good-bye.” 
 
 “What lingo is this?” thought the fisher- 
 man in disgust; but Edmund was already in 
 the street. 
 
 He knew that the business with the pleasure- 
 seekers would not begin till eleven, but the 
 glories of the morning were more than the 
 
 uses. The sun dropping living gold into a 
 
A GREAT LIE 45 
 
 hollow emerald, the wan, bright air splashing 
 his face with the foam of the sea, struck 
 answering flashes from his dancing eyes, 
 and his cheeks awoke into colour. The beauty 
 of him lay as open and unabashed by his 
 grandeur as the poppies dreaming aside of 
 the sentinel lines of firs that climbed the cliff 
 and darkened the dainty pathways that crept 
 about it. 
 
 All the desires of his nature seemed to 
 move rhythmically, the gladness of love and 
 the gladness of strength. His thought moved 
 absolutely apart from the antitheses_ or 
 opposites of the things in which he rejoiced. 
 There were no thirsty people, no shivering 
 people, and none sick or in prison, in the 
 world which he created out for his. own eyes. 
 
 And now he wanted people to recreate 
 their world by seeing him. 
 
 To his disappointment, they did not at 
 present pay much attention to him. Still, 
 he noticed that elderly spinsters selected him 
 
 from among the boatmen, though others were 
 
46 A GREAT LIE 
 
 more fluent canvassers than he. He took a_ 
 curious pleasure in figuring for these angular 
 creatures, with their  bird-like contours, a 
 something for which they craved indefinitely 
 and with no tragic passion as his had been. 
 
 His first two fares were sprightly types 
 of this class of woman. Seated together 
 reposefully, they looked at him as the oars 
 dipped and redipped, scattering the delicate 
 feathery spray. The delight of mere rowing 
 was enough for him, the delight of finding 
 that at his second birth he had by nature 
 that which others acquired by art. 
 
 But their look at him as an adorable savage 
 showed, though it were but dully, the starved 
 feminine desire in themselves, unconfessed 
 even to each other: He is human, he is a 
 man, he is beautiful—strong; let us look at 
 him, they would seem to say. 
 
 Or they would add: He is ignorant; we 
 are above him; we are at home in hotels 
 and genteel boarding-houses. 
 
 More than that, they were initiates in the 
 
A GREAT LIE 47 
 
 delicate unrealities of the metropolis; they 
 were accustomed to speak half-truths in well- 
 bred English and prettily-inaccurate French, 
 or Italian, perhaps—or even German, if a little 
 music were thrown in to counteract the words. 
 As for music, Mendelssohn ohkne worte was 
 just the thing. 
 
 Edmund listened with a strange feeling 
 of understanding when the elder of his fares 
 said, as she dipped half a hand in the gleaming 
 water: “It is quite like that little Gondellied 
 in F sharp minor, Charlotte.” 
 
 ‘Do you know, I was about to say the same 
 thing,” was the reply, and both ladies won- 
 dered whether the boatman did not think they 
 were very clever to have such ideas. 
 
 Meanwhile, they continued to look at 
 Edmund, who was silent, asking himself 
 whether his youth would bring forth nothing 
 better than the furtive regard of the elderly 
 and timid. 
 
 When he had disembarked his freight, he 
 
 had an interval in which he observed the 
 
48 A GREAT LIE 
 
 chariness of chaperons. They seemed afraid 
 of him on behalf of their young charges. 
 He was not a catch; he was a snare. The 
 thought tickled him till he laughed, to the 
 consternation of the public. There was 
 enough vulgarity in it to justify his using 
 the vox popult. Hence his phrase: youth is 
 birdlime for the oof-bird. He read it in the 
 face of every chaperon, every mother, who 
 chose a weather-beaten mariner to sail with 
 in preference to him. 
 
 Perhaps, though, it was stupid to be so 
 clever in detecting motives. The beach was 
 so crowded, so various in its alleged attrac- 
 tions. The town-band playing music, so 
 meaningless, that even words could not have 
 gibbered more unintelligibly ; their unofficial 
 rivals, the sham negroes, or S. Vitus Dancers 
 of the Fair, ambitiously warbling,— 
 
 ‘I would I were a kipper in the foam,” 
 to the tinkling of an irresponsible banjo, the 
 chattering of bones, and the jingling of tam- 
 
 bourines; the diplomatic boatman collecting 
 
A GREAT LIE 49 
 
 signatures against a project to prevent his tribe 
 from worrying the visitors; the children dig- 
 ging holes with the enjoyment which unmakes 
 the vanity of futile labour; the nurses reading, 
 sewing, gossiping — the thread of common 
 meaning in all this, was so slight that it 
 seemed a pedantry to trace it. 
 
 And if criticism were ill bestowed on this 
 scene, what had it to do with the fashionable 
 promenade that was high above it? There, 
 all the graceful languors of pretty woman- 
 hood, the eager idleness of beautiful girlhood, 
 ‘contrasted with the lack-lustre laziness of 
 middle-aged valetudinarians and young men 
 ‘“‘of the period,” might well astonish the critic, 
 till he should lie on his back, or lean on his 
 elbow, and forsake his tablets. 
 
 But Edmund, seeking with misgiving his 
 relationship with the world of his past, hunted 
 down remorselessly the elements that would 
 survive in himself and them, though the seven 
 seas should unite in an attempt to cleanse 
 
 them. 
 
50 A GREAT LIE 
 
 A love of gross money, of empty spaces, 
 or spaces filled with trumpery matter. 
 
 Oblivion of that which money was made 
 to sustain and comfort, of that which space — 
 was intended to shelter—the real youth, the 
 lasting beauty. 
 
 Youth and beauty had come upon him 
 suddenly. He was twice blessed. He was not 
 such a fool as to say he had paid in money. 
 
 He had paid in wishing through and against 
 the million gross things that never had lived 
 and never could live. 
 
 Against his father for one; and his father 
 was ill! 
 
 Edmund quickened his pace homeward, and 
 as he proceeded, a woman, dressed in mourn- 
 ing black, looked after him with astonishment 
 and made a step in pursuit. 
 
 ‘Surely that must be Edmund,” she mused ; 
 but she faltered in her thought, for she had 
 testimony that her Edmund, the beautiful, 
 
 the accomplished, the despondent, the erratic, 
 
 was dead. 
 
A GREAT LIE 51 
 
 Far behind her was a monstrous hotel, 
 the aggressive patron of three ‘‘superb views,’ 
 whose ambitions were divided between bank- 
 ruptcy and limited liability. In a balcony of 
 this edifice Miss Charlotte sat conversing 
 with a friend. As thus :— 
 
 “We saw a curiously handsome boatman 
 to-day.” 
 
 “It is often the case, dear,” said the friend 
 (as though there were statistics on the subject) ; 
 “it is the fresh air that does it.” 
 
 ‘‘He was quite Protean,” said Miss Char- 
 lotte. 
 
 “He had only one face, I hope,” said the 
 friend. 
 
 ‘‘“One at a time, of course,’ said Miss 
 Charlotte, tartly. 
 
 Subsequently, when Miss Charlotte’s charac- 
 teristics were under review, the friend remarked 
 that she was shallow. 
 
 “Why?” asked the gossips. 
 
 “Because she never sees anything beauti- 
 ful without thinking of the heathen.” 
 
52 A GREAT LIE 
 
 As for Edmund, the thought that his father 
 was ill, and that he had wished against him, 
 did not cease because his step was fast. It 
 shone around him in colour-pictures. The- 
 blaze of wild mustard cried shame upon it 
 in scorn; the healing leaves of the common 
 mallow gave no credence to his unchildlikeness. 
 Nature had but two voices: ‘I cannot forgive,” 
 or “I cannot believe.” From the mass of 
 poplars, and the elder-trees whose flower rested 
 on them like foam tossed up from their waves 
 of living green, at the foot of the returning sea, 
 to the cliffs summit whereon the virgin con- 
 volvuli clasped trusting arms about the neck 
 of a giant, there were no other voices than 
 these. The dark firs crept up and up into the 
 light in spite of him, and the shining poppies 
 marched abreast of them in the same aspira- 
 tion. The marigolds, wandering children of the 
 garden, nodded their careless oblivion of him. 
 Up in the sky, eastwards, an almost human 
 cloud lay down as a god, to sleep a respite 
 
 for him. But doom was coming, coming. . . 
 
A GREAT LIE 53 
 
 It was refreshing to turn from Nature’s 
 high disdain to men and women passing to 
 and fro, satisfied candidates for one another’s 
 notice. To them, at least, he was no lie; 
 to them, at least, he was harmless. For 
 them, at least, he was born again. 
 
 He struck savagely across a field. Boys 
 were playing cricket there. It amused him 
 vastly to stand and watch. The _ bowler 
 bowled wides, and the batsmen gained their 
 runs almost solely by byes. Whenever a 
 straight ball came, the fieldsman cried 
 “Out!” and the bowler shouted it. 
 
 Once, however, this had seemed high — 
 pastime to him, worthier of celebration than 
 the so-called decisive battles of the world. 
 
 Gotch-one and Hallaway were in. He 
 remembered how he had truckled to them 
 in the old days, exclaiming: ‘“‘Well done, 
 sir,’ if one of them skied a ball. 
 
 Now, Hallaway had returned a ball to 
 the bowler, who missed it. It passed to 
 
 Edmund’s feet, and he picked it up. 
 
54 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Let me bowl an over,” he said. 
 
 They sullenly assented. 
 
 Then there was a call of joy. Hallaway’s 
 middle stump reeled, and the bails hit the 
 wicket-keeper on the hands. 
 
 ‘“You have one end of the hundred any- 
 ” said Edmund derisively. He had 
 made that jest a year ago, and had waited 
 
 till now for the courage to fire it off. 
 
 how, 
 
 He let MHallaway’s successor make one 
 run in order that he might bowl Gotch-one 
 with his third ball. That being done, he 
 clean bowled two more, and left the field to 
 muttered denunciation of his interference, and 
 open admiration of his skill. 
 
 Afterwards, by aid of enormous threats, 
 Hallaway continued his innings on the ground 
 that “it wasn’t fair.” 
 
 Edmund finished his walk, rejoicing. 
 
 He gave the fisherman twenty shillings. 
 
 ‘Praise the Lord!” said the latter. ‘Ten 
 of these be yours. A pound is more’n twice 
 
 my takings.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 55 
 
 He tried to reduce the benefit, but the 
 fisherman compelled him to take it. 
 
 Coming into the kitchen again, he was 
 disagreeably surprised to find Old Brewster 
 there. Old Brewster was a Christian devotee 
 subject to spiritual exaltations. His head 
 had a way of moving constantly sideways, 
 as though it was receiving an_ invisible 
 buffet. 
 
 Edmund shook hands with him. Leaning 
 forward in his chair, with that horrifying 
 spasm upon him—so horrifying that even 
 children did not insult him—the old man 
 drew his hand back, and wiped it on the 
 almost brittle surface of his discoloured 
 corduroys. 
 
 ‘Hot hands, they say, is cold ’earts,” he 
 mumbled. ‘Well, well, hows the boy?” 
 
 This remark was addressed to Mrs 
 Weaverling. 
 
 “Why, you know, Mr Brewster,” she 
 began. 
 
 “T don’t know,” he returned, doggedly, 
 
56 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “and I tell ‘ee, wazt. Good-night, young 
 gentleman,” he said to Edmund, ‘‘ good-night, 
 I shall see you pretty often, I expect, till 
 he comes back.” | 
 Rising with difficulty, the old man tottered 
 to the door, and, still shaking his head to 
 the right side, ascended the street. 
 Somewhat upset, Edmund went to bed, but 
 
 his rest was spoiled by tiresome dreaming. 
 
CHAPTER LV. 
 
 On Saturday, Edmund was aware of the 
 eruption of lurid news which had temporarily 
 displaced even the Cricket Championship from 
 the posters. But he was bored by this ship- 
 wreck with its multitudinous gestures and 
 cries, so vehement and futile, so stagy, 
 now that the mad paddle-wheel had ceased 
 its revolution. True, hundreds had gone 
 down, but he had risen again! True, 
 thousands were wringing their hands, but he 
 flashed back the cumulative irony of the ages. 
 He was alive, even he, Edmund. If all the 
 graces of all these dead people were taken as 
 the preparatory sketches of a masterpiece, was 
 he not infinitely more than they, being the 
 completed picture? ‘‘They talk of children,” 
 
 he cried out derisively. ‘‘ Children forsooth ! 
 57 
 
58 A GREAT LIE 
 
 The Gotches and the Hallaways are the 
 children I know.” He would not read the 
 papers that told of other children that would 
 have melted him, even as they melted hearts 
 of lead, and relaxed an iron despair. He 
 would not read of the men standing to 
 their fate like heroes, with no vain cry of 
 Westminster Abbey on their lips, but 
 conscious of their captain’s error, and loyal 
 in the making light of it. 
 
 “T can’t moan over people I never saw,” 
 he said pettishly. ‘I could wish that the 
 five survivors had been picked men — 
 not apes. They say a poet went down. 
 Well, that sounds appropriate: he would 
 never have gone down with the public in 
 any other way. But he is said to have cried 
 au vevoir/ as he leaped overboard.. That 
 sounds ominous.” 
 
 The fisherman was more interested in the 
 catastrophe than he, although the body of 
 his. son had not testified to his death, to rid 
 
 his soul of an all-displacing hope. 
 
A GREAT LIE 59 
 
 Twice had the teethy rocks under 
 Baker’s Gap, appeared and reappeared under 
 weed and water, indefinably hungry; the 
 stealthy crabs, immerging into and emerging 
 from the saturated sand, were declared inno- 
 cent by their ghastly thinness, and the sea, 
 dispassionate in its immensity, forbade no 
 scrutiny of its marginal shallows. 
 
 Edmund brought him a report to that 
 effect at about eight in the morning. The 
 fisherman was understood to declaim huskily, 
 from the depths of the cotton-wool into which 
 he had been sewn, against the vanity of 
 looking for a dead thing. 
 
 “Tt is written,” he said, ‘that the sea shall 
 give up her dead.” 
 
 “That will be a bad day for the crusta- 
 ceans,’. remarked Edmund, who. escaped 
 censure through not being understood. 
 
 Indeed, the fisherman could not make up 
 
 his mind as to whether his guest was a new- 
 fangled specimen of evangelist or a scoffer, tem- 
 
 porarily suffered to illustrate the folly of his kind. 
 
60 A GREAT LIE 
 
 After breakfast, Edmund incidentally struck 
 tears out of Gotch-one. ‘‘ That’s how Moses 
 got it out of the rock,” he said. 
 
 The apparent cause of this outbreak was 
 slight—a little lie that circumstance offered 
 to him. Indeed he seemed just, righteously 
 angry. The real cause impelled him neither 
 to crack jokes nor blaspheme, but to blush 
 hotly to the roots of his hair with remem- 
 brance of what he had once endured, and 
 silently to pledge himself to cynicism and 
 revenge. 
 
 He was agreeably diverted from such un- 
 christian feelings, in the course of a special 
 visit to the promenade on the heights, to 
 see people in the act of reading a hurried 
 obituary notice of himself in the Scout. 
 
 He did not: feel severe to-day. The ladies, 
 fluttering the demy-folio pages of that paper, 
 seemed a prettily-petty crown to the ambitious 
 handiwork of Nature, even if they could not 
 be said to take rank with the convolvuli. 
 
 Below—it was troublesome to guess how 
 
A GREAT LIE 61 
 
 many feet—little boys dived from a_break- 
 water into the sea. 
 
 The ladies looked down quite helplessly 
 on the glassy surface which hid the divers 
 as effectually as though they were never to 
 reappear, snorting, and out of breath. 
 
 “After the affair of that little cripple, it 
 is quite unpleasant to see this sort of thing,” 
 said one. 
 
 “Will he wxever come up?” thought 
 another. 
 
 Their mild speculative alarm, or, in the 
 case of one or two, their deep but unprotest- 
 ing anguish, was a fine commentary on the 
 limits of philanthropy. | 
 
 These Toms, Dicks and Harrys, unlimited, 
 exerting themselves with such apparent danger, 
 were protected from the interference of the 
 timid for several reasons. First, because 
 they were Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, un- 
 limited, and had no obvious connection with 
 any other firm. Secondly, because the safety 
 
 ‘of the commonplace is confirmed by observa- 
 
62 A GREAT LIE 
 
 tion. Thirdly, because the way to the divers 
 was long and steep. Fourthly, because no 
 one else was going to their assistance. 
 
 Such was the way that poor human nature 
 was exposed on the Saturday afternoon 
 following the disappearance of a_ crippled 
 boy. 
 
 No one going through these arguments 
 while the children bathed beneath her, but 
 was shadowed by their spirit of selfishness 
 and time-serving. In each one who feared, 
 the cynic, raised up to combat the coward, 
 imposed his false personality, for longer than 
 his time of service, upon his creator. 
 
 Gazing sharply down into the arena, 
 Edmund found himself addressed by Miss 
 Charlotte. 
 
 “Ts it safe for those boys, do you think?” 
 she inquired. 
 
 He turned round flashingly, ‘‘Shall I tell 
 you straight, Miss?” he said. 
 
 “Better straight than crooked,” she an- 
 
 swered. 
 
A GREAT LIE 63 
 
 ‘T wanted to tell you,” he said, ‘‘never to 
 be afraid about others.” | 
 
 “Why ?” 
 
 “Because it makes others afraid of you.” 
 
 ‘Really! that is clever,” she said. ‘Why 
 on earth don’t his clothes fit better?” she 
 thought. ‘That jersey is positively bursting. 
 Clearly he’s a gentleman—a journalist in 
 search of copy, perhaps. It must be part 
 of his masquerade to dress like that.” 
 
 ‘“T am sorry,’ resumed Edmund, ‘that I 
 gave you a moral reason. It would be so 
 satisfactory to many people; but the true 
 reason why you shouldn't be afraid for others 
 is that it takes such a lot out of you. It cries 
 out for an ocean of tears, and what can you 
 give?—next to nothing. Fear demands 
 remedial action, but it nearly always produces 
 —well, youths like that Weaverling that was 
 drowned.” 
 
 “How horrid of you!” 
 
 “Not at all. Take an ugly child—the 
 
 parents do not love it; it were happier un- 
 
64 A GREAT LIE 
 
 born. ‘Kill it then,’ says Reason: ‘a life 
 for a life, says Fear. Very well, the child 
 is brought up. Later on he has his say, 
 perhaps. And what a posse of unendurable 
 ideals are thrown overboard when that comes 
 to pass! But the sea that receives them is 
 so clean, and makes them into sea-weed, I 
 have been given to understand. And yet, 
 you are afraid of it!” 
 
 He lifted his cap and strode away whistling. 
 
 Smiling, like one who has exhibited to ad- 
 vantage a remarkable curiosity, Miss Charlotte 
 resumed her reading. Firmly convinced that 
 he was masquerading, her interest in him 
 was lively. 
 
 Edmund was not interested in her; he 
 was thinking of Amy Grainger, the musical 
 methodist, with the soft brown hair, the kind 
 eyes, the pretty pink cheeks, the red, little, 
 mobile mouth. 
 
 There was no fear now of boys calling him 
 “Amy's pet”; it would no longer be within 
 
 the capacity of the Sunday-school teacher to 
 
A GREAT LIE 6s 
 
 stoop down and touch with her cool hand 
 the place where the stone had stricken him 
 —as once. 
 
 Yet, in those intimate offices of kindness, 
 how unattainable she had been. And now 
 in his Antinous-like glory he saw her con- 
 quered in advance, and the vision thrilled 
 him, nor was it surprising that he mistook 
 his cruel self-complacency for tenderness. 
 
 Little recollections of her stirred him as a 
 dream leading heavenward. Her head slightly 
 bent over some hymn-books, one delicate ear, 
 like a sea-shell, caressed by an idle wisp of 
 hair, was flower-like in the rosy lamp-light 
 of yesterday, now as ever, though the warm 
 glow of a declining sun abased all pettier 
 things before the sea. 
 
 It seemed so easy to be loyal to an old 
 desire that had been at once his abounding 
 joy to possess, and his despair not to be able 
 to confess—so easy, so delightful. 
 
 But the word “loyal” had never occurred 
 
 to him before. It was intellectual, moral, to 
 E 
 
66 A GREAT LIE 
 
 say ‘‘be loyal”; it had been passionate, 
 spiritual, to say “adore.” 
 
 “How is Mr Weaverling?” he inquired 
 when he reached home. 
 
 “ About the same, thank you, sir,” said his 
 mother. 
 
 “This congestion of the lungs has been 
 a serious business,” he remarked; adding, in 
 a mere frolic of mendacity, “it was rather 
 lucky that I turned up.” 
 
 “Tf you'd been a son you couldn't ha’ done 
 more,” she said. 
 
 “ T daren’t have done less for such a mother,” 
 he replied, and she looked in his face with 
 a painful feeling of remembering something 
 seen or heard long ago. | 
 
 After tea, Mrs Gotch appeared, and Mrs 
 Weaverling effusively thanked her, and left 
 the house. 
 
 Edmund listened to her footsteps. “It is 
 odd; she is not going down town,” he said. 
 
 “No, she’s bought the dinner,” said the’ 
 other. ‘She do look worried, don’t she? 
 
A GREAT LIE 67 
 
 Quite mopin’ like. She’s restless; that’s 
 what she is.” 
 
 epch |? 
 
 “Yes, She’s fairly upset, and it was ’ard 
 tay iose the’ little feller. She'd kept ‘im all 
 these years.” 
 
 “Yet he was ugly—he was a cripple,” 
 said Edmund. 
 
 “Bless you, she never thought about it in 
 that way—she was so proud of him. Says 
 she to me, ‘Mrs Gotch, ’e’s cleverer nor 
 any of us.’”’ | 
 
 “How so?” 
 
 “He read and read; he was allus studyin’. 
 You see he couldn't do much work, and the 
 boys plagued him.” 
 
 “Ah, the tenth plague would have been 
 a blessing in 4zs time,” said Edmund. 
 
 Mrs Gotch was puzzled, but the melody of 
 her own voice was as good as an explanation 
 ro) Her, 
 
 ‘Boys will be boys,” she said. 
 
 “They will be devils till it is whipped out 
 
68 A GREAT LIE 
 
 of them,” retorted Edmund. He then pro- 
 ceeded to draw a faithful portrait of Gotch- 
 one. ‘‘Here is a boy that I saw to-day 
 amusing himself with pushing some smaller 
 boy, who evidently admired him, into the 
 gutter. Every time his victim returned from 
 the gutter, he pushed him in again. He had 
 bristly black hair, small, black, meaningless 
 (unless I say cruel and greedy) eyes, and a 
 wolf’s jaw.” 
 
 “You don’t say!” ejaculated Mrs Gotch. 
 
 ‘“But Ido say,” retorted ‘Edmund it 
 clumped his head, so I ought to know; and 
 he wore a sort of waspy yellow suit, a red 
 tie, and a little dirty stand-up collar. He'd 
 made his handkerchief into a tollywhack, and 
 his boots had hobnails that made a _ horrid 
 scratching noise on the pavement. Odious 
 little beast!” 
 
 Mrs Gotch recognised the clothes, and was 
 wrathful. Only the righteous traditions of 
 twelve generations of Methodists kept her 
 
 anger down. 
 
A GREAT LIE 69 
 
 “J dare say there are worse,” she said. 
 
 “Then we @fe indeed chastised by 
 scorpions,’ returned Edmund. 
 
 “Anyhow,” she said, “ poor little Teddy 
 wasnt hurt by no boys. He was drowned. 
 Percuppie, too! Why, thank God, Iam 
 well and strong, and yet I hain’t seen the sea 
 these ten years. Yes, ten years come next 
 August.” 
 
 “Tt seems a pity to spoil such a record 
 by crossing Jordan,” sneered Edmund. 
 
 Shortly after this, his mother returned. 
 Though it had not been raining, her boots 
 were soaking, and she took them off and 
 
 gloomily watched them steam before the 
 fire. 
 
CHAPTER NY. 
 
 Mrs WEAVERLING was glad to hear Edmund 
 remark that he was going to chapel that 
 Sunday. He heard her telling the sick 
 fisherman of his approaching exploit, and the 
 cheery answer: ‘‘Then he’s on the Lord’s 
 side, after all.” 
 
 “Tt amost seems the Lord ’ad sent him,” 
 said his mother. 
 
 ‘OQ praise the Lord, He thinks of every- 
 thing for everybody.” 
 
 Their implied misunderstanding of him 
 made him feel uncomfortable. 
 
 Did they lie unwittingly, and contribute 
 
 to a hideous scheme of irony in a manner 
 70 
 
A GREAT LIE a1 
 
 which left him guilty of the stain and the 
 horror; or did they not lie, but subserve 
 their Lord in the vindication of that Sun 
 of Righteousness under which all false things 
 are but ‘“‘as cloudlets that flee”? 
 
 Was he really beautiful? he asked himself 
 as he left the cottage and strode between 
 some railed backgardens and a field to 
 Transpontine Street, which lies under the 
 viaduct. 
 
 From an ornamental attic on his right, a 
 servant struck him with an inquisitive eye, or 
 a man in shirtsleeves halted momentarily in 
 pulling up some weeds, and across his vision 
 a train broke the Sabbath over his head 
 with a defiant whistle and an impetuous 
 swish. 
 
 It was certainly in no dream that he saw 
 these solidities and stolidities; he gave no 
 motion to them as they gazed at him with 
 alien eyes or simply ignored his _ presence. 
 Had they been an ingenious lie he would 
 
 have deciphered them, but, instead of that, 
 
72 A GREAT LIE 
 
 he saw absolutely no meaning in these vege- 
 tables and men, these houses that stood still 
 or ran on wheels. 
 
 “The vegetables are looking very human 
 to-day,” he remarked; and, when he reached 
 Transpontine Street, he found his opinion 
 confirmed by the boy called Hallaway’s 
 mentioning to Gotch-one, on their way to 
 chapel, that “he ought to be under a glass 
 Case: 
 
 Edmund said ‘‘Good morning” to them. 
 
 “Good morning,” they replied. 
 
 “You must be sorry at not being able to 
 walk with young Edmund Weaverling.” 
 
 Both boys became sulky. 
 
 ‘You were so fond of him, I heard,” quoth 
 Edmund, ‘‘so kind. Pretty though you un- 
 questionably are, you never thought him too 
 ugly to play with, did you?” 
 
 “T didn't play with him much,” said Halla- 
 way. 7 
 
 “Nor I,” said Gotch-one. 
 
 “T like to think that you made him so 
 
A GREAT LIE 73 
 
 happy that he died of joy,” said Edmund, 
 frowning blackly. 
 
 They were at the public-house at the end 
 of this street of shops and noisy soldiers and 
 sailors, by now. 
 
 “Come on,” whispered Hallaway to his 
 companion. 
 
 “Not so fast, my boys,’ said Edmund. 
 “Rest like this weary, dreary, blind-eyed 
 street, which twinkled, and flared, and stared, 
 and roared, and laughed, only yesterday— 
 your street, you young cubs, for you live in 
 the scum of it, thank God.” 
 
 They followed him down to the beach, pro- 
 testing an anxiety to be at the chapel ‘‘in time.” 
 
 “Sit down,” said Edmund, and they sat 
 on the dusty shingles, surrounded with ropes 
 and rails—for this was the harbour side of 
 the town—feeling horribly alone with him in 
 spite of the proximity of an old sailor and a 
 bathing-woman. 
 
 “Just one word before we part,’ said 
 
 Edmund. ‘You were so kind to this poor 
 
74 A GREAT LIE 
 
 fellow who was drowned, you showed it in 
 
 such nice ways, by never calling him names, 
 
 ” 
 
 for instance, on the day he died 
 
 Both boys turned white as a sheet. 
 
 ‘«“____That,” proceeded Edmund impertur- 
 bably, “I thought I would remember your 
 example by raising the standard among you 
 of brotherly love. And I will do it this 
 way. The first spotted cur, big or little, 
 
 whom I catch bullying any one 
 
 ay, even 
 though it be another spotted cur—I’ll thrash, 
 I swear I will, till he isn’t fit to crawl home. 
 And I tell you that, that you may tell it to 
 the first. murderer whom you meet. Now 
 be off with you!” 
 
 They slunk away. 
 
 Hallaway was the first to speak. ‘What 
 the devil did he mean?” 
 
 “YT never did nothink to young Ted,” 
 said the other—‘‘only a bit of chaff now and 
 then.” 
 
 “Hulking cad to talk to us like that!” 
 whimpered Hallaway, with dry hot eyes. 
 
A GREAT LIE 75 
 
 Edmund did not find it possible to follow 
 them into chapel, though he knew who would 
 be there. He was agitated, dispirited. His 
 futile anger—he knew it was futile by their 
 gait of injury—dropped harmlessly upon two 
 whose natures were so elementary as theirs. 
 It were as wise to be angry with a cat 
 for tossing a mouse as with these boys 
 for bullying the impotent of their kind. 
 Besides, it ill accorded with the beautiful 
 appearance which he made, to rail like 
 Thersites. 
 
 But perhaps he really was a Thersites, in- 
 habiting, say, the body of Paris; and that 
 thought brought him to this point, that if 
 these boys lied, he lied—lied with his face 
 and his height. But people believed him: 
 that was the great excuse! 
 
 He noticed now that a man with keen 
 eyes over a pointed beard was gazing at 
 him. 
 
 ieay), [espeak\to you; a. moment?’ \'said 
 
 this person. 
 
76 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Well,” said Edmund coldly. 
 
 “To speak shortly,” said his questioner, 
 “JT am an artist. As such, I look for types 
 that I may paint. I want to paint you, and 
 I will pay you for it.” 
 
 “Why?” demanded Edmund. 
 
 ‘Because, sir, you are the most splendid 
 man I have ever seen.” 
 
 “You mean that?” said Edmund searchingly. 
 
 Certainly) sits 
 
 “You see nothing through me—no dwarf- 
 form crouching inside, following me line by 
 liners 
 
 “It is not an artist’s business to see such 
 things. As a matter of fact, I see you, no 
 less, no more. If you had nothing but your 
 head, I should want you. And it doesn’t 
 matter to me whether you slew Abel or 
 stoned Stephen.” 
 
 “You are asking a great thing,” said 
 Edmund. 
 
 “T know, sir, but, remember, you shall 
 
 live again in my picture.” 
 
A GREAT LIE a7 
 
 “That is a new way of lying,’ said 
 Edmund. 
 
 “You didn’t get your cheap wit at the 
 shop where you got your face, I hazard,” 
 said the artist. 
 
 “You must pay me _ beforehand,” said 
 Edmund. 
 
 The artist reflected a moment. Then he 
 said: ‘‘Here’s my card and here’s a sove- 
 reign. To-morrow at ten, please. Sitting, 
 two hours.” 
 
 “J shall charge you a guinea a day.” 
 
 The artist whistled. 
 
 ‘“T have the monopoly of myself.” 
 
 “The devil you have!” 
 
 The two separated after agreement, and 
 Edmund threw up his cap. 
 
 He followed this act with a bath, a sym- 
 bolism by which he cleared himself of the 
 hypocrisy of clothes, and had only one lie 
 between himself and heaven. ‘But why, oh 
 why,” he asked himself, ‘‘should there be the 
 
78 A GREAT LIE 
 
 hypocrisy of clothes between that lie and 
 the world?” 
 
 On his return home, his mother inquired: 
 ‘who preached ?” 
 
 ‘“Lyminge,” said Edmund briefly. He 
 wished the bells would cease wagging in his 
 ears. ‘Il am going this evening,” he ob- 
 served, 
 
 “ Again!” 
 
 He bowed over the table. He was half 
 afraid of something happening if he lied too 
 
 much. 
 
 After tea, which was over by five, Mrs 
 Weaverling returned from an interview with 
 her husband and said: ‘ Would you see 
 Weaverling a moment, sir?” He complied 
 with the request. 
 
 “T hear you'll be at chapel this evening,” 
 said the fisherman. 
 
 “Yes; can I do anything for you?” 
 
 “No, sir, but p’r’aps my Sunday togs would 
 fit you.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 79 
 
 “Oh, I see,” said Edmund, smiling, ‘“ You 
 think I’d like to be smarter.” 
 
 ‘Sparks will be sparks,” said the fisher- 
 man. He pointed to a drawer which con- 
 tained some less characteristic clothing than 
 that which Edmund wore. 
 
 “Til not say nay,” said the latter, and 
 attired himself anew as directed. 
 
 ‘J wouldn’t ha’ asked, if I had thought 
 you was vain,” said the fisherman; ‘but | 
 seed you was not, and you do the eye more 
 good in these clothes than in them clothes.” 
 
 “You are so good,’ murmured Edmund. 
 
 “And [——” 
 
 “Can you sing?” demanded the fisher- 
 man. 
 
 py! 
 
 “It seems to me,” said the fisherman, 
 coughing somewhat, ‘that some be good 
 and some can sing.” 
 
 moDhev lower, “hohts’,\)\ quoted), Edmund. 
 
 “Ay, lad, sing that.” 
 
 Downstairs, with trembling ecstacy, Mrs 
 
80 A GREAT LIE 
 
 Weaverling listened to the wonderful voice 
 uplifted in the heart-thrilling hymn that refuses 
 not utterance from aught that will sound, 
 though it be by the turning of handles, or 
 the blowing of bellows, or the grip of hunger 
 
 on the windpipe of a waif. 
 
 “ Let the lower lights be burning ! 
 Send a gleam across the wave ! 
 Some poor fainting, struggling seaman 
 You may rescue, you may save.” 
 
 “With a voice like that,” said the fisher- 
 man, ‘“‘wot an evangelist you might be!” 
 
 ‘“‘«Ffimself he cannot save,’” quoted Edmund, 
 
 “Ah, brother, everybody must say that 
 who shall find his soul.” 
 
 “TI see yours in your face,” said Edmund. 
 “You are shining, father—I mean_ brother. 
 God bless you.” 
 
 He hurried downstairs. 
 
 Oh, it was horrible, this farce of his beauty ! 
 He stamped on the ground, and called him- 
 self a suicide, but the thought would not be 
 stayed. 
 
A GREAT LIE SI 
 
 Then came another thought: ‘What 
 business had I to bless my father, who have 
 wished for myself in his despite?” 
 
 These clothes that he wore, the purchase 
 of penury, of self-sacrifice, inflicted on him, 
 for perhaps a minute, moral tortures equi- 
 valent to those endured by Hercules after 
 he donned the garment of Nessus the 
 
 Centaur. 
 
 As he sat within the wide and airy and 
 cleanly room, among people whom he knew 
 quite well, but whom he was supposed not 
 to know, he felt the intense desirability of 
 home as a passion that struck him into awe- 
 some humility. The man who had shown 
 him in had smiled as one who officiates for 
 God, not as a part to be played with dramatic 
 solemnity, but as a domestic and intimate 
 factor in his relations with life. 
 
 And now a boy, wishing to sit next him, 
 beckoned with that persuasive child-smile, 
 
 which loosens our tears, and that loosened 
 F 
 
82 A GREAT LIE 
 
 his, and they hung in the abyss of his eyes, 
 that grew in darkness against the glare of 
 the naked lights. 
 
 The shining preacher with a voice that 
 rose and fell—like water or like wind— 
 drew out the overflowing hearts of the 
 servants of Christ. 
 
 Spiritual waves ran through the room 
 and abraded his roughened conscience and 
 made a wound, and, in the dead silence of 
 his fear and remorse, he cried to God, as it 
 were through a ceiling of impervious rock. 
 
 To others it was open sky. To him it 
 was rock. It was rock simply because he 
 was rock, prepared to be crushed into sense- 
 less powder, unprepared for the quickening 
 agony of the patriarch’s rod. 
 
 He thought of his last application of the 
 simile and smiled. Then he opened his eyes 
 widely—they felt so keen and cool, and 
 looked up a hymn, written with barbarous 
 fluency, by Charles Wesley. 
 
 It was so funny that fe should be singing 
 
A GREAT LIE 83 
 
 it that he sang his best, and many people 
 glanced approvingly at him. 
 ‘But who or guile, or falsehood use, 
 Or take God’s name in vain, or swear, 
 
 Or ever lie, themselves to excuse, 
 They shall their dreadful sentence bear. 
 
 “The Lord, the true and faithful Lord, 
 Himself hath said that every liar 
 Shall surely meet his just reward 
 Assigned him in eternal fire.” 
 
 The tune went cheerily like a waltz, and 
 acted as a tonic on his harrassed nerves. 
 After this the smallest children trooped out, 
 and the preacher continued the service with 
 a view to awakening a spontaneous demon- 
 stration from the adults. 
 
 It was not long ere the spiritual waves 
 surged once more, and the great words of 
 the Redeemer fell, freshly as though His 
 ministry had begun again, on the ears of 
 Edmund. 
 
 “He that findeth his life shall lose it.” 
 
 Edmund reddened, for, accidentally or in- 
 
 tuitively, the preacher’s glance met his. He 
 
84 A GREAT LIE 
 
 could not help feeling that he had in very 
 literal manner found his life. 
 
 Well, he must lose it: what then? Should 
 the law of tragedy and the malice of irony 
 dash him to pieces against the prison bars of 
 his ignorance he would be glad, he would 
 give thanks. O the bitterness, the bitterness! 
 
 But he could give nothing else up—he 
 swore it with the emphasis of a man sick 
 unto death—he could give nothing up but 
 life, life that was hateful, secretly impotent, 
 intolerably humbled by its own shape and 
 shapings, life that was hideous to have and 
 to hold. 
 
 Why should God ask for it? 
 
 There, by the platform, a girl was giving 
 herself up to the joy of a new inspiration, 
 filling a vessel that she had emptied of self 
 with the brimming love of God. 
 
 She communicated her longing and _ her 
 satisfaction to the souls that surged about 
 her and made her feel their strength as the 
 
 wings. of angels to bear her up. 
 
A GREAT LIE 8x 
 
 Poor creature! What had she done, after 
 all? She had no Great Lie to renounce. She 
 had only a little trumpery to sacrifice, a little 
 levity to subdue, a little impatience to control. 
 
 Would she, after all, do the small things 
 that Christianity would demand of her after 
 she appropriated it? As for Old Brewster, 
 mumbling there in front, with infinite ex- 
 pense of spasms—painful to witness—that he 
 would be “faithful unto death,” he was talk- 
 ing commonplace. His altruism was born of 
 self-interest and necessity. Nietzsche was 
 right—in recalling him he was overlaid with 
 a memory alien to him as his beauty— 
 Nietzsche was right: Christian altruism was 
 born of self-interest and necessity ! 
 
 His speculation was absolutely free from 
 Satire; it was the grey air of veracity that 
 hung about the shape of the Great Lie and 
 deepened men’s belief in it. But, for all 
 that, he was glad that, owing to his position, 
 Old Brewster was unable to see him. 
 
 To be a critic—that was one thing, mused 
 
86 A GREAT LIE 
 
 Edmund as a summing-up: to be a liar— 
 that was another. But, if the critic was born 
 of the liar, why should the liar die? And 
 how honourable it sounded, if to criticise well 
 be a good thing, to bear the shame of 
 criticising one’s own lie as well as the glory 
 of exposing the world. 
 
 All round him were flashing faces over 
 bended knees or backs bent forward, and a 
 murmur that grew in passionateness: ‘O 
 God, be with us. Save oue more, and Thine 
 shall be a@é/ the praise.” 
 
 ‘One more, one more,’ © pleaded “the 
 preacher. ‘Anyone else?” 
 
 Over the question broke the singing that 
 is also sobbing, and he sang too, missing out 
 the passages that gave the singer to the 
 Lord, and during this time his finger was 
 locked in that of the little boy. And the 
 Spirit answered the flesh of him with a sneer 
 —‘‘the caress of a great lie, a great lie.” 
 
 A snake’s caress! Well, and why not? 
 
 And, as he bent forward, he heard an old 
 
A GREAT LIE 87 
 
 man behind him praying for the unannounced 
 sinners yet in the room, of whom he was 
 one: “Bring them to Thyself, dear Lord, 
 OQ d@o/” and there was a kind of running 
 chorus of “O do! O do!” and Edmund felt 
 the Gospel thundering at his heart. 
 
 But still, though shaken and broken, he 
 lived through the flashing lights and the in- 
 sistent knocking: austerely silent, the Great 
 Lie lived on. 
 
 Thank God it was over now! “I have 
 neglected salvation,” he thought, remembering 
 one of whom the preacher had said that he 
 died like a madman, with that one word, 
 “neglected,” on his lips. ‘I have neglected 
 salvation, but in the end there shall be no 
 more thunder, there shall be no more choice; 
 there shall be the great peace, the eternal 
 quiet.” 
 
 The Great Lie rose to its full stature. “I 
 am damned,” he said gently to himself, and 
 he passed out of the place, shaking hands 
 
 with some of the “brothers” and “sisters.” 
 
88 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “TI am damned,” he repeated mechanically, 
 “but this I know. I know that human nature 
 loathes finality, falls back in disgust from the 
 necessity of choice. I await the facts, that is 
 all. I have chosen nothing.” 
 
 With that he turned with a certain relish 
 to the south-westerly wind blowing in at the 
 porch. His psychological motions might, in- 
 deed, remind one of the wind in their variety, 
 but only of the sirocco in their quality. Signs 
 of the zdée fixe in a liar malgré lu, they 
 pointed to an end from which he might well 
 shrink. 
 
 Miss Charlotte and her friend, who had 
 attended the service in the capacity of in- 
 quisitive Laodiceans, did not speak to him 
 as they passed out, but they had not failed in 
 observation. ‘The shabby black coat should 
 disillusionise you, Charlotte,” said the friend. 
 “A masquerader would be still in the fisher- 
 man’s garb, zest ce pas? The black coat 
 speaks too plainly for the actual resources.” 
 
 ‘In that case,” said the other, “it is clear 
 
A GREAT LIE 89 
 
 that naiveté has died out, except in religion, 
 which remains dreadfully naive, and noisy, 
 too, one is sorry to confess.” 
 
 “Console yourself: he remains handsome.” 
 
 “That certainly is so, but to me he looked 
 all nerves this evening.” 
 
 “Poor extremist!” exclaimed the friend. 
 
 “Exit Greek god,’ said Miss Charlotte. 
 “What a change! Proteus repudiates it. 
 ‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean.’” 
 
 Others—utter strangers to him—had also 
 observed Edmund. Virginia, the woman who 
 had seen his comedy of. errors on the pro- 
 menade, pointed him out to her father. 
 
 “They are like,” he replied, ‘wonderfully 
 alike; but look at the dress. Besides, nothing 
 would have induced Edmund to come here. 
 Moreover, he went down in the Hardcastle 
 last Thursday.” 
 
 He said it roughly, decisively ; and he felt. 
 like a torturer or ever he felt her crying on 
 his arm. But he was afraid of this imperti- 
 
 nent plebeian who wore the face and form, 
 
90 A GREAT LIE 
 
 who sang almost in the voice, of his daughter's 
 lover. ‘I am cruel to be kind,” he reflected, 
 meaning, no doubt, that family pride was 
 tenderness in disguise. 
 
 Edmund was now in the possession of the 
 evangelist. 
 
 “T have seen you come in and out, sir; 
 but you don’t attend our band meetings and 
 bible-classes, and so our acquaintance is im- 
 perfect. Now, brother, shall we see you next 
 Tuesday? We shall be delighted if you will 
 come. I hope to hear better news of Brother 
 Weaverling.” 
 
 ‘“He’s in the Lord’s hands, bless Him,” 
 said Mr Grainger, the class-leader, confidently. 
 “My daughter, sir,” he remarked abruptly, 
 and Edmund shook hands with her. 
 
 The first thing of which he was conscious 
 was that she was not so tall as he had 
 thought her when his seeming height was 
 less. The second thing was that her face 
 wore a slightly supercilious aspect, and the 
 
 third that her hand was feeble in its response. 
 
A GREAT LIE gr 
 
 The total impression was simply one of an 
 individuality too poor to have insincerity 
 chargeable to it, 
 
 Her feelings towards him as he was, were 
 less pleasing in their expression than her 
 feelings towards him as he had been, simply 
 because now she wanted to seem as much like 
 a lady as possible, and then she had merely 
 wanted to be kind. 
 
 She and Edmund found themselves walk- 
 ing together behind her father and the 
 minister. 
 
 ‘“‘T heard something,” she said, “about your 
 having tried to rescue the poor boy.” 
 
 ‘‘T didn’t succeed,” he said. 
 
 “Tell me about it,” she pleaded, ‘if you 
 don’t mind.” 
 
 Her voice was far more seductive than the 
 sounds she had been able to evoke from the 
 harmonium during the service, and he told 
 his lying story with spirit and fidelity to its 
 first edition. 
 
 “Tt was the Lord’s doing,” she said. 
 
Q2 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Hum,” he murmured. ‘Where is_ he 
 now, think you?” 
 
 “Tn heaven.” 
 
 “You were sorry for him, I heard.” 
 
 “Who wouldn't be? he was shamefully 
 bullied.” 
 
 “You saved him some torment, | heard, 
 and someone told me that he worshipped 
 the ground you trod on. That was _ his 
 heaven. How should there be another ?” 
 
 “Oh, don’t!” 
 
 ‘“ Now, tell me, Miss Grainger, how did you 
 feel towards him? Are you able to love 
 cripples?” 
 
 ‘Well, to tell the truth, I used to hate 
 the sight of him, but I knew it was very 
 wrong, and I trained myself to forget what 
 he looked like. Poor Eddie!” 
 
 “You never showed your dislike?” 
 
 ‘“T knew it was very wrong.” 
 
 “How good of you to refrain!” 
 
 He looked steadily into her face as they 
 halted at Mr Grainger’s door. The wonder 
 
A GREAT LIE 93 
 
 and the glory of his face stole into her eyes 
 and lodged in her brain. 
 
 Heedless of etiquette, she took off her 
 right hand glove, ere saying farewell, that 
 she might feel his personality more keenly 
 as he pressed it with his. 
 
 He walked rapidly away, crying ‘“ Husks! 
 husks !” 
 
 This was not the first time, then, that he 
 Maumtariven on a lie. It had once- been 
 ready-made for him by Pity. He did better 
 
 now, in truth, that he made it for himself. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Monpay morning found Edmund in the 
 fisherman’s garb again, his money jingling 
 in the pocket. 
 
 He bought a straw hat and a cheap jersey, 
 and, having donned them, he called on the 
 artist. 
 
 The latter occupied a neat house in a 
 clean road overlooking the east cliff. His 
 face showed amazement on seeing Edmund. 
 ‘“T thought I had dreamed about you,” he 
 said. ‘‘ Thank goodness, you're alive!” 
 
 He led the way through French folding- 
 doors into a large studio. 
 
 On the wall was a spirited study for an 
 uncompleted picture—Marsyas bound naked 
 
 to a pine-tree, fear unspeakable in his 
 94 
 
A GREAT LIE 95 
 
 eyes, and, on the ground, his audacious flute 
 for a sign of the insulted god. Round about, 
 the Nysans, gloomily acquiescent, stared at 
 Marsyas while Cybele pondered. 
 
 “Let me have you as you are, without a 
 Stremeursaid the artist. . ‘You. shall) be 
 Apollo from henceforth.” | 
 
 ‘What is doing in that picture?” demanded 
 Edmund. 
 
 ‘““Marsyas is about to be flayed.” 
 
 Oh)” 
 
 ‘and, you have willed it. Look ‘cruel 
 and relentless. Justify that fear.” 
 
 The blood mounted slowly to Edmund’s 
 face. ‘I must be vain, too?” 
 
 “Everything, except kind.” 
 
 When he had posed for about an_ hour, 
 the artist said abruptly: ‘““You see, now, why 
 I didn’t care a fig whether you were this 
 or that. Here you are to see Pagan beauty 
 inexorably vain. Cruel, too. And when the 
 beastly torture’s done, the god will make 
 
 Marsyas into a Phrygian river, and much 
 
96 A GREAT LIE 
 
 good his victim will find for himself in that 
 sloppy form.” 
 
 With a sense of relief, Edmund concluded 
 the sitting. «He could not., bear 4tomesee 
 Marsyas tied to the  death-tree )Sioriga 
 trumpery piece of presumption. 
 
 He acquitted himself hastily, however, of 
 any such design. He wanted an eminence 
 under heaven, not above it. He demonstrated 
 that to his own satisfaction by ordering an 
 irreproachable grey suit ata tailor’s. It would 
 make him respectable, gentlemanly; the gods 
 are not jealous of that. 
 
 It was surely mere vanity, though, that 
 turned his steps after this from the unshaped 
 outlines, the vast comfortableness of the east 
 cliff with its unrailed lounges of natural velvet, 
 its unupholstered footstools of rock, to the 
 promenade. It showed the inherent weakness 
 of his mental attitude—beauty exhibiting itself, 
 happy in seeing rather than in being. 
 
 His intention naturally led him by way of 
 
 a portion of the beach, whereon his shadow, 
 
A GREAT LIE 97 
 
 distorted by the shelving stones and pebbles, 
 was powerless to receive the impress of any 
 grace. 
 
 Edmund had a seaman’s trick of looking 
 mechanically for treasure whenever he paced 
 the beach, and he was not distracted from 
 his careful inspection of the miscellany under 
 his feet by the presence of some mates of 
 his father, who gave him a “ hullo” in passing. 
 
 It was, therefore, rather a shock to his 
 nerves when he came suddenly face to face 
 with Old Brewster, who was engaged in a 
 similar quest. 
 
 Old Brewster had a wallet on his back and a 
 staff with a point to it; he, therefore, examined 
 soft fabrics that interested him, such as scraps 
 of old envelopes, delicate sprays of seaweed, 
 etc., with ease, paying out the horror of 
 bending his emotional head for the hard sub- 
 stances, such as whelks, and other shells, 
 from which he could develop things, more 
 decorative if less simple and pretty, for sale. 
 
 They stared at one another unpleasantly. 
 G 
 
98 ANGREATIMAE 
 
 Edmund murmured a request for pardon, which 
 was ignored. 
 
 “T’ve summat to show you,” said Old 
 Brewster. He deliberately opened his wallet, 
 and from it extracted the half of a leaf of the 
 local journal entitled C-to-the-Nines, which 
 was published every Monday. 
 
 This fragment—surviving a copy of the 
 latest issue—contained the portrait of a man, 
 drowned in the shipwreck of the Hardcastle, 
 whose great personal beauty was made obvious 
 even by the poor impression from a cheap 
 process-block which represented him. 
 
 ‘Who's that?” snarled Old Brewster. 
 
 Edmund flushed deeply. 
 
 “Who's it like?” The words shot out 
 sideways from the piston-motion of the old 
 man’s head. 
 
 ‘‘ Like me, I suppose.” 
 
 The usual group of small boys was now 
 eyeing them from a distance. 
 
 The old man’s articulation grew as strenuous 
 
 as water rushing through an empty pipe: 
 
A GREAT LIE 99 
 
 “Christ deliver him from it, you—fake !” 
 
 “Take him away ; he’s. mad!” cried 
 Edmund to anybody or nobody, for no one 
 interfered. He strode away, leaving Old 
 Brewster jabbering ; but the horrible contempt 
 of the words, ‘‘ You fake,” danced in his 
 head. 
 
 During the afternoon his spirits returned. 
 He won five pounds—the amount of a wager 
 between two young nabobs—for outstripping 
 the record that one of them had made in the 
 last regatta. To feel the oars twinkling in his 
 hands, and his spirit, as it were, join hands 
 with Neptune and hurry him along the track, 
 was to taste, unadulterated, the new life; 
 there was room for nothing else. Exhilarating 
 too, was the excited admission of his ‘‘ stunning 
 pace, and the ‘Bai Jove, we must enter 
 you for the next regatta,” and the unfurling 
 of the note, of which he intended to keep 
 four-fifths to himself. 
 
 After that ‘‘crowded hour,’ not more 
 
 miraculous for him than for the nabobs, who, 
 
jefe) A GREAT LIE 
 
 however, would not deny the genuineness 
 
 of the triumph of visible muscles over 
 distance and weight, he read the piece 
 of paper which Old Brewster had left in his 
 hand, attentively, and obtained further infor- 
 mation in the Public Library. It appeared 
 that a cynic and “ttérateur resided in the 
 person of the Edmund who had gone down 
 in the /Jardcastle. It did not stagger Edmund 
 to reflect that this cynic and “ttérateur was 
 strongly influencing his own thought-life at 
 the present moment. He did not know 
 whether to be glad or sorry—though it had 
 brought him shame—that he wore the image 
 and superscription of the drowned person 
 When he read that the latter had ‘ been 
 engaged to a charming and accomplished lady, 
 daughter of an influential resident of this 
 town,’ the debated coincidence aroused a 
 joyous devil in him. If one lies for life’s 
 dear sake it is preparation towards lying for 
 amusement. If insolent ugliness, glorying in 
 
 its pious ineptitude, grudged him a mask so 
 
A GREAT LIE TOT 
 
 superbly complete as that he wore, was it not 
 a call to arms? | 
 
 In other words, must not the Great Lie be 
 paraded, must it not go through all the paces, 
 tossing its coloured plumage, shaking its silver 
 bells, the while? Must not the Great Lie, 
 moreover, be a virile lie, careless of conse- 
 quence, the parent of unnumbered lies? 
 Parsimony in lying—the first and the last 
 lie—makes the idealist cry: ‘Out, damned 
 spot!” but prodigality in lying—the capering 
 battalions of deception—dazzles even him, for 
 it is life itself. It lives; it conquers. 
 
 There was a good deal about lying in the 
 verses of his prototype. These, burning 
 with hatred and contempt, had some fascina- 
 tion for Edmund as he pored over them in 
 the Public Library; but it was not soothing 
 to be thus fascinated. Others, full of the 
 irony of one who has compromised with 
 the best, who knows it and will not dare 
 to mend, he really liked. This was himself 
 
 —past and present. “We are subtle sinners: 
 
102 A GREAT LIE 
 
 thank God we're so very sensitive,” they 
 seemed to say. By his appreciation of them, 
 his prototype and he seemed in perfect har- 
 mony, if not concord, even now. 
 
 When he returned home, a little before 
 tea-time, the fisherman seemed _ surprised 
 when he handed him ten shillings. The 
 bank-note remained unchanged in his pocket. 
 
 “How did you manage it?” quoth the 
 fisherman, “my mate Bill was round, and 
 said you weren’t nigh the boat during the 
 forenoon.” 
 
 “J was earning money by sitting for an 
 artist,’ said Edmund. 
 
 Rh whats sthatre 
 
 ‘Havin’ his face painted, stupid!” said 
 his wife. | 
 
 “Them artists is no good,’ commented 
 the fisherman; “and how might you be 
 painted ?” 
 
 Edmund told. 
 
 “Was that Apple-what’s-’is-name a fisher- 
 
 man?” demanded his father. 
 
A GREAT LIE 103 
 
 ‘‘No—he was a god.” 
 
 “ There’s but One,” said the fisherman. 
 
 “Artists are only happy when they are 
 making mistakes,” said Edmund. 
 
 Mrs Weaverling hereat left the bedroom 
 to admit Miss Grainger who had turned up 
 for tea, as it happened, though she protested 
 that she had only come to inquire after the 
 health of the fisherman. 
 
 The latter’s curiosity remained unabated. 
 
 “Well,” he said: ‘You, a boatman, were 
 painted as a god. How was it done?” 
 
 “First, I had nothing on, so I was in the 
 image of my Maker.” 
 
 “And you defiled that by calling it the 
 god Apple?” 
 
 epractichs 
 
 mwWell, said the, fisherman): ‘it ain't; for 
 me to talk, perhaps; but I'd rather starve 
 than be taken stock of by a_ heathen 
 painter.” 
 
 “You are worth more than you imply, I 
 
 think,” said Edmund. 
 
104 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘Look here,” said the fisherman, “I ain't 
 going to take money for them sittings.” 
 
 “In that case you return two shillings.” 
 
 The fisherman looked pathetically at the 
 half-sovereign. 
 
 “The change will wait,” said Edmund, 
 and it did. 
 
 He entered the kitchen at a moment when 
 Miss Grainger was looking her best. She 
 was handing down cups and saucers, and, 
 in the stretching of her arms, the white wrists 
 showed prettily. The unpretentious cheerful 
 dress she wore was free from the absurd 
 inlaid-work at the bosom for which, as a rule, 
 she had an unabashed regard. She seemed 
 fitted with that grace which means more 
 than perfectly, and that was because she was 
 working with pleasure and without mental 
 constraint in a woman’s way. Her face had 
 caught a tint from the fire, and Edmund 
 felt unusually drawn towards her as she 
 turned to greet him. 
 
 The tea was lightened by pleasantries 
 
A GREAT LIE 105 
 
 which were quite acceptable after the chilling 
 conversation of the artist, and the seer. 
 
 She asked him if he ate the tails of 
 shrimps; he inquired of her if she ate the 
 whiskers or the black beady eyes. 
 
 “‘When you come to think of it,” she said, 
 ‘there is no reason why we shouldn't eat 
 blackjacks.” 
 
 meen e:) horrid thing you!’ exclaimed 
 Mrs Weaverling, choking in her tea-cup. 
 
 “Well, but shrimps are only sea-worms. 
 They eat the dead things, don’t they?” 
 
 Mrs Weaverling’s face grew very stern, and 
 only then did Miss Grainger realise how 
 
 horrible a reflection she had called forth. 
 
 But Edmund lied boldly. ‘iheyareat 
 nothing dead,” he asserted. ‘‘They are 
 afraid.” 
 
 Just then Mrs Gotch came in. 
 
 “Don’t mind me,” she cried cheerfully. 
 “Don't mind me! Now wot ’av’ you been 
 doin’ to my boy?” she demanded of Edmund, 
 shaking her finger archly. ‘He was afraid 
 
106 A GREAT LIE 
 
 to come: ‘if that there Mr Edmund’s there 
 I won't,’ he sez. Sez I, ‘’e won't bite!’” 
 
 “Tt is the inferiority of my bark which 
 makes him suspicious,” said Edmund. 
 
 “ But, Lord!” said Mrs Gotch, without pay- 
 ing any attention to him, “I’m that skeered 
 I can’t tell!” 
 
 Wriggling with malicious joy, she permitted 
 her feigned reluctance to yield to pressure. 
 
 “Well,” she said at length, ‘Tammas 
 Brewster told my husband Bill that—he-he-he ! 
 how can I say?—that Mr Edmund there is— 
 he-he-he!—a dead man pretending to be 
 alive.” 
 
 She looked a veritable “connoid type” as 
 she sat in the frowsy armchair, one red hand, 
 indissolubly united to her wedding-ring by 
 adipose fat, clasping a limp hempen bag, the 
 other profusely perspiring over the inoffensive 
 head of Dick. 
 
 Edmund noted that a serious determination 
 that he should not laugh himself out of com- 
 
 plicity in Old Brewster's announcement had 
 
A GREAT LIE 107 
 
 hardened her face, which was quite rigid about 
 the lips, while the eyes were lighted up like 
 the bull’s-eyes of two dark lanterns, to track 
 him down. How beautiful was motherly love! 
 
 “Ts that all?” he asked. 
 
 Mrs Gotch lost her temper at this, and 
 blurted out that she wasn’t ‘ashamed to be- 
 lieve in the Devil. Call me soft if you like,” 
 she added indignantly. 
 
 The other women paled, but Edmund 
 svommcaimily:) ‘Give me some more tea, 
 please.” 
 
 Then he raised his eyes, and unshrinkingly 
 met those of Mrs Gotch. “It appears,” he 
 remarked, “that I greatly resemble a man 
 who was drowned when the //ardcastle went 
 down. Let it be admitted, indeed, that I 
 might be mistaken for him. What then? 
 ‘Singular, you say. I would say that it 
 would be more than singular if no two per- 
 sons were alike in the whole world.” 
 
 Mrs Gotch grunted, and said something 
 
 about ‘‘lettin’ folks judge for themselves. 
 
108 A GREAT LIE 
 
 7 38 
 
 Tammas Brewster ain't afflicted for nothin’, 
 she added. “ He sees things.” 
 
 “ People should ride their nightmares in bed, 
 and stable them there,” retorted Edmund. 
 
 He asked Miss Grainger if he might walk 
 with her. The insincerity of the request was 
 strategic. She complied with it. 
 
 They walked through a lane between 
 cottages and meadows, and crossed a little 
 brook. The landscape, under the mesmerism 
 of twilight, seemed to sleep under their 
 feet. 
 
 “What do you think of that rubbish?” 
 he asked. 
 
 “Baa!” sang out a dolorous sheep, fore- 
 seeing the shambles, and that all grass is 
 vanity. ‘‘ Baa, baa!” sang out a responsive 
 brother. The creatures lifted one by one 
 the same abject face of alarm, and_baaed, 
 or bowed it down again in equally abject 
 resignation, and nibbled. 
 
 “You hear what they say,” said Edmund. 
 “Do you say bah likewise ? ” 
 
A GREAT LIE 109 
 
 “ Don’t talk about it,” she entreated, 
 
 By this time they stood in the furrowed 
 path that leads to Cocoa-nut Hill. Suddenly 
 he took her hand, and looked into her face. 
 
 “Do you see any dead thing here?” he 
 said. 
 
 ‘“No, I don't,” she replied, convincingly. 
 
 He took off his hat, and she loved him 
 for that sweep of brow and hand that marked 
 him seemingly as freedom’s own. She wor- 
 shipped him as enshrining a beauty that was 
 neither manly nor womanly but divine, a 
 thing perfect in repose as only flowers are, 
 perfect in motion as are only birds. 
 
 He led her up the hill, and talked of 
 flowers to her, of that asphodel which had 
 been raised up in his mind when his body 
 changed; but, in the midst of his talk, her 
 foot slipped, and, with a little scream, she 
 sank down breathlessly on the slope. He 
 delivered himself also to grassy ease, and 
 lay with a face upturned to the sunlight, 
 
 while the shadows of prowling oxen passed 
 
110 A GREAT LIE 
 
 overhead. She murmured something of the 
 time. 
 
 “The time!” he echoed; ‘I take no count 
 of Time till he comes up, like a pig, to be 
 killed.” 
 
 She laughed: the word pig always had 
 a humorous effect on her. 
 
 “Take care of the ox!” she squeaked. 
 
 “And the pig will take care of itself,” 
 added Edmund. Out of mere spite he had 
 assumed a senseless habit of Scriptural parody. 
 
 And so for her Time was not killed, for 
 she felt the sweetness of protection in his 
 mock guardianship of her, and, as the moments 
 flitted away, Time’s tick of them grew tender, 
 and she worshipped him. 
 
 Yet she was thinking of nothing; but as 
 she plucked, in her ignorance of asphodels, a 
 stem of dolly-grass and gently tickled his 
 neck with it, she was feverish with gaiety, 
 and her hand trembled. | 
 
 And as he _ remained motionless, - still 
 
 watching the oxen—now and then pretend- 
 
A GREAT LIE rT 
 
 ing that a bull was among them—she grew 
 more passionate with the dolly-grass and 
 stuffed a handful of it into his pockets. 
 
 For him the idyll was irritating: it was 
 not an idyll of ‘Theocritus. Theocritus!— 
 was that name, too, in the vague repertory 
 of his second youth? The fisherman’s son 
 
 had never known it. 
 He rose hastily and swept the earth 
 
 from himself with haste. They walked 
 slowly away, and, as they walked, he held 
 her hand. Such a dry little hand it was, 
 yet it clasped his firmly, and such a small 
 voice it was that twittered a wee joke, and 
 gurgled the most accommodating of laughs, 
 a laugh that was just a reflection of hearts- 
 ease and nothing more. It was a laugh of 
 possession, there was no forecast in it. He 
 was by her side in the fair world of the 
 good God, and it was enough. 
 
 She was by his side, therefore, but that 
 was not enough for Edmund. MHe opened 
 
 his mouth wider. In his extravagant love 
 
I12 A GREAT LIE 
 
 for himself he craved all worldly delights ; 
 she symbolised an element of satisfaction, 
 but in herself she did not satisfy. 
 
 Still, inasmuch as she had played with him 
 and affronted him (for a sign that he was 
 human to her), he gave a decisive indication 
 of his impetuous temper. 
 
 All his antagonism to law had _ been 
 awakened by Mrs Gotch, who, after all, 
 was no worse for not breaking it. 
 
 There, in the hollow of the hill where 
 Time was sleeping in the lap of Nature, he 
 kissed her, and, with the imprint of the 
 Great Lie on her cheek, she returned home 
 
 richer for all she had given away. 
 
Cae baie salsa Wali 
 
 Epmunp had given away nothing: he had 
 only tantalised himself to the point of de- 
 siring that he might fling his life away 
 royally. Beiwthat ihe) might inotnin) a 
 moment of insobriety, make one duck of his 
 bank-note, he cashed it at a tavern over a 
 glass of ale. Then he ran down to the sea 
 by a blind instinct; but for him this night 
 the sea began and ended in the surge of 
 blood in’ his veins. 
 
 As he crashed through Baker’s Gap, he 
 saw the, gleam of a lantern among the 
 boulders, and he heard the chink of coin. 
 
 Four young labourers were playing with 
 cards for money. Such was the changing 
 
 that was going on where he had changed. 
 113 ia 
 
114 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “This is sacrilege,” he said severely. 
 
 “What does Molly say?” asked the tallest 
 of the players. 
 
 “Are you aware that ‘the wages of sin is 
 death’ ?” asked Edmund, stretching out his 
 forefinger. 
 
 “No harm in losing ’em in a jolly gamble 
 then ; they aint much to keep,” said the other. 
 
 “Old Ryan, do git at ’im,” observed his 
 comrade. 
 
 “Old Ryan—if you are indeed old,” said 
 Edmund, gravely scanning the rubicund 
 downless face of that muscular person— 
 “Old Ryan, lets mey remind’) you thacems 
 hundred and fifty men—not to speak of 
 women and children—were cut .off in the 
 bloom of youth in the shipwreck of the 
 Flardcastle, only twenty miles north-west of 
 this very spot.” 
 
 “Oh, I say, Queen Anne is dead,” said 
 Ryan with an air of great surprise. 
 
 The others giggled. 
 
 “Young man,” said Edmund, “never let me 
 
A GREAT LIE 115 
 
 hear you say that again. Have you never 
 recited the Apostles’ creed? Queen Anne is 
 not dead. She is partaking of a glorious 
 resurrection. Round her head is a nimbus; 
 in her hand is a harp. She is no longer 
 Queen Anne, it is true, and you will forgive 
 me, brother, if I have spoken amiss, she is 
 no longer Queen Anne, but she has made the 
 acquaintance of her six children. In heaven, 
 too. It isseldom you find a whole family there 
 (indeed her illustrious father is absent): but 
 the children died young.” 
 
 “Oh, dry up!” cried Ryan. ‘Shy a stone 
 at him, Alf.” 
 
 “Sling your hook,” remarked the latter 
 person, “unless you want to play.” 
 
 “Suppose I do play,” said Edmund. 
 “Do you think I cannot?” 
 
 ‘“‘Snufflers don’t as a rule.” 
 
 “It is motive makes or mars the game,” 
 said Edmund. ‘You are jealous; afraid. 
 I cannot be jealous or afraid. I know I 
 
 shall win.” 
 
116 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘Oh, I say!” cried Alf. 
 
 ‘Certainly, I know. >: Satan” is \sureiits 
 tempt me this first time. What are you 
 playing for ?” 
 
 “ Browns,” : 
 
 Edmund shrugged his shoulders. ‘ Browns! 
 If it comes to that, why don’t you play with 
 the stones ?” 
 
 “What the pleecemun would you play 
 with? Fivers?” 
 
 “That is a sneer, brother,” said Edmund 
 with a pained look. ‘But admit that you 
 gamble—a fearful and delicious sensation I[ 
 must suppose, since you gamble here—since 
 you make yourselves at one with old pots 
 and boots and kettles to gain it—admit that 
 you gamble, why do you weaken that sensa- 
 tion, till it is worth nothing at all, by play- 
 ing for browns? I should choose shillings. 
 If, moreover, I indulged the low, sordid 
 motive of self-betterment at my neighbour's 
 expense, I would have the pluck to stake 
 
 my all.” 
 
A GREAT LIE tik) 
 
 ‘Shall we play his game, Alf?” said Ryan: 
 Alf sulkily agreed. 
 
 The game of Nap—stipulated for by one 
 of the young men—was now explained to the 
 patient and receptive ear of Edmund. 
 
 As a cat watches a mouse he scanned with 
 a tingling delight the anxious faces of his foes. 
 
 You do. not seem to appreciate the 
 historical suggestions of the game,” he said 
 pleasantly, when he was about to clean them 
 all out. ‘Dismiss all thoughts save those of 
 the patriot. I call ‘Wellington.’” 
 
 The four others glared and grinned al- 
 ternately. What was he going to do? 
 
 “Well,” said Ryan with a jerk, “ Satan 
 has tempted you.” 
 
 fohruen friend,’ said Edmund, with a 
 malicious smile, ‘Satan has tempted me; 
 but I repudiate Satan.” His hand went to his 
 pocket; their looks hung on him. He with- 
 drew two sovereigns, change from his bank- 
 note. ‘Satan has tempted me,” he repeated 
 
 slowly. ‘I have won two pounds. But I 
 
118 A GREAT LIE 
 
 repudiate Satan—so! One, two, three, and 
 away!” 
 
 The money went whizzing through the air 
 and sank, insignificantly, into the sea. 
 
 It is worth no more than the stones now, 
 said Edmund. “I have done with gambling.” 
 
 He turned to leave them; but Ryan stood 
 in the way. “None of your blarney,” he 
 cried ; “‘you're a sharper.” 
 
 Viram, cam) li? 72 >said a Edmund eee eee 
 that’s the cant of the losing gambler, is it ?>— 
 that you are not so sharp as me? A nice lot 
 you are!” 
 
 “Don’t believe he threw away good 
 money,” said Alf. 
 
 The others took up the cry, and Edmund, 
 his green eyes scintillating with a_ special 
 joy, slapped his pocketful of silver till it 
 rang. ‘I am going to thrash you one after 
 thesothera. he Said anvan itsta, 
 
 He soon found himself fighting them alto- 
 gether. It is doubtful if he could have en- 
 
 joyed himself more, stalking like Hercules 
 
A GREAT LIE 119g 
 
 through the twelve labours, or like Tann- 
 hauser forgetting the Pope in the Venus- 
 mountain. Ordinary civilisation fails to afford 
 a parallel to his feeling of glee. Long after 
 the lantern had guttered out, he was hitting 
 right and left, and straight before him. Ah, 
 how masterly was the Great Lie! It was they 
 who stumbled on the sightless stones, not 
 he; they, who made the air hideous with a 
 coprolaliac clutter, not he. Even Ryan’s 
 blow that struck his upper lip and made it 
 feel larger than life, only increased his en- 
 thusiasm of self-confidence. The fight ended 
 with the silent desertion of the two younger 
 combatants, followed by a truce. 
 
 “Well, I suppose this proves nothing,” 
 said Ryan, when he was knocked down for 
 the seventh time. 
 
 “Nothing required proof,’ said Edmund, 
 haughtily. ‘You were insulting and I was 
 resentful: that is all.” 
 
 “Why did you make up like a parson, 
 
 then, and interfere and spoil the luck?” 
 
I20 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Tam not a parson,” said Edmund coldly. 
 ‘I merely happen to agree with parsons on a 
 point or two. Gambling is one. As for the 
 luck, someone always has it, I apprehend. 
 My luck does not depend on my being a 
 thief. Can you grant that?” : 
 
 “Tt was your chucking it away,’ said Ryan. 
 
 “Ah,” said Edmund. “It shall return unto 
 me after many days.” 
 
 “Well, you're a rum cove,” said Ryan. 
 alin ott, 
 
 “Good night,” said Edmund; and he stood 
 alone, well knowing that the bruised and 
 battered, yet still gallant youth, now scramb- 
 ling up Baker's Gap, had decided that he, 
 Edmund, was more gallant still. 
 
 It was now eleven o'clock, and the fever 
 in his blood was but requickened by success. 
 It was not the sea that spoke to him even 
 now ; it was the promenade, dreamy, and gay, 
 and chattering. He skirted the edge of the 
 rocks with the agility of a mountaineer, and 
 
 scrambled up the parapet of the fishmarket in 
 
A GREAT LIE 121 
 
 less than half-an-hour. Soon he was tramp- 
 ing the road, oblivious of all save the sly 
 promptings of the Great Lie. He, in himself, 
 was Nature; a Marine Terrace, however drab 
 and paramount a matter, could not stand _ be- 
 tween him and the sea, for the sea was in 
 his blood: he knew it. He bounded up the 
 steeps of the undercliff, led merrily to his goal 
 by the livid brilliancy of the electric light. 
 His pulse measured the imminence of the 
 impending presence he sought as in a half- 
 dream. 
 
 It came at last. 
 
 “Why, Ned, I haven’t seen you for an age; 
 where do you come from?” 
 
 He did not know this person, but the 
 thought did not trouble him for an instant. 
 
 ‘Where do you?” 
 
 She gazed at him quizzically. 
 
 My oure the one to ask, aint yer? Well, 
 I've been to Parry—the money came in 
 handy; it did that! I was down in the 
 mouth. I was dying for a holiday. But 
 
122 A GREAT LIE 
 
 what do you mean by this rig-out? And 
 what's wrong with your potato-trap. You ain't 
 been fighting on your ’unny-moon, ‘ave yer?” 
 
 “Oh, I’m not married yet,” said Edmund. 
 
 She beamed on him. ‘‘Oh, this is gettin’ 
 thick! And the slops; you ain’t told me 
 of them.” 
 
 Surely she was alive as she seized his arm 
 and marched him down the promenade, owning 
 every bit of him as it seemed. Yes, she was 
 alive, alive as a flame of gas in front of a 
 draper's shop. It was wonderful. 
 
 “T’ve not been home yet, Ned. I’ve just 
 been pottering about. I tell you, I’ve been 
 real miserable.” 
 
 They had passed from the promenade into 
 the churchyard. 
 
 “T don’t like churchyards!” she announced, 
 decisively. ‘‘There are ghosts about.” 
 
 ‘““Oh, no,’ said Edmund in surprise. ‘No 
 one is allowed to walk on the grass.” 
 
 ‘Drop it, Ned. It’s not nice to die, any- 
 
 ”) 
 
 how. 
 
A GREAT LIE E23 
 
 “Tt is easy,” said Edmund, quietly. 
 
 “ How do you know: have you been through 
 ati 
 
 “Once or twice.” 
 
 She laughed. He liked the sound, hard 
 though it was; and turned round to look at 
 her. 
 
 Yes: she was handsome; her eyes were 
 good. He told her so. 
 
 “Yours are not what they were,” she re- 
 torreas Ny! but they. had a’ devil: in 
 them!” 
 
 “They look deficient because you’ve been 
 looking through a spotted veil,” said Edmund. 
 
 They passed into Transpontine Street, and 
 in one of the purlieus of that thoroughfare 
 paused at a brush-shop. 
 
 “‘Can you spare time to sit and talk a bit,” 
 said the woman. 
 
 “TI suppose I can,” said Edmund, slowly ; 
 he was growing afraid. 
 
 She opened the private door and led him 
 
 into a sitting-room abutting on to a side-street. 
 
124 A GREAT LIE 
 
 His eyes, roving over it, noted a piano, a 
 sewing-machine, a photograph advertising the 
 tooth-powder used by a person in an aston- 
 ishing hat, and a gracious picture of Eve in 
 the garden. 
 
 “Tt will serve as a keepsake,” she said, as 
 her eyes followed him. 
 
 ‘When did I give it you?” he asked. 
 
 ‘There was no one but Alice /¢hen,” she 
 snapped. On the mantelpiece he saw a photo- 
 graph of Edmund-the-Minor smiling at him. 
 
 ‘Play us a choon,” said Alice, opening the 
 piano. 
 
 “T can't,” said Edmund. 
 
 “ Fiddlesticks ! you used to.” 
 
 He went to the instrument and raised the 
 lid from the top, whereupon the front threatened 
 to fall off. She plucked it away, remarking: 
 “it zs a rummy Pie-Anna, ain't it? but I’d 
 rather ‘ave it any day than one of- them 
 measly armoaningums.’ Edmund raised the 
 lid from the keyboard, and the sorry skeleton 
 
 stood bare. Under his eyes were the notes 
 
A GREAT LIE 126 
 
 —poor crumbling bones that had partly broken 
 away from the wood on which they were 
 mounted. ) 
 But just as a kiss on a withered cheek 
 may bring tears from the deeps of the un- 
 withering heart, so the caress of those dirty 
 and greasy-looking notes might awaken phan- 
 tom melodies, sweet though faltering, deep 
 though tinkling, from the heart of the old 
 piano. Heavily lay the years upon it; not 
 less heavily the latent memories imbibed 
 through hands now still, and voices now silent. 
 Edmund, dawdling as it seemed before the 
 bookless-rest, was lifted momentarily by a 
 new ambition. He would make the unresist- 
 ing victim of the vamper, the limping Cory- 
 bante scourged into performing the antics of 
 the dance, speak for once in the voice of its 
 hidden self,a self enriched by dishonour, through 
 an utterance diminished by age. Surely it 
 would be a voice to recall a dead mother, 
 and with her a youth with no blacked-out page 
 
 irremovable from the book, and, with the return 
 
126 A GREAT LIE 
 
 of youth, would not a great madness betide 
 her and a great despair? Would he not have 
 unravelled for him the mystery of her identity ? 
 He did not know that the piano was second- 
 hand from the mothers of other persons than 
 Alice; that its tragedy was its own absolutely ; 
 that nearly all her furniture was second-hand ; 
 that the woman was too poor or too wise to 
 preserve solid mementoes for a museum of 
 The Age of Innocence ; that her present passion 
 sang to her from everything worth looking 
 at in the room. 
 
 Certainly—though he was too clever to 
 divine it—it was not the piano that would 
 recall the dead mother. As for the tune— 
 well, he had in his head a melody that has 
 derided primness and laughed from the heart 
 of Love's generosity ever since Blangini wrote 
 it down; and if one hear it without the 
 words there is a little sob in it; and the sob 
 may echo his nearest sorrow. 
 
 Edmund heard the music over a_ bridge 
 
 of silence: his fingers itched. 
 
A GREAT LIE 127 
 
 He would teach this woman that there are 
 strains more moving—in her language, ‘‘measly” 
 —than the wheezing of a consumptive world 
 lost in the cold of eternity and space: that the 
 mining of the heart achieves a choicer melan- 
 choly than the muffling of the brain. 
 
 “Vou ave a slowcoach,” said Alice. 
 
 Suddenly, with disagreeable emphasis, a few 
 of the words came. They contrasted oddly with 
 the dead-mother pathos that he had assigned 
 to the music—‘‘ La Mamma non chiamar”! 
 
 Edmund was, however, frightened, not 
 amused. How and why did the words come 
 to him at all? Why, indeed, did the tune 
 come? but the spontaneous coming of the 
 tune was more natural than the spontaneous 
 coming of the uninspired words. Something 
 similar had happened before, and he had rather 
 rejoiced at the newness of resource which it 
 implied. But now he knew that he wanted 
 to reside alone in his beautiful body; he did 
 not like to be over-run with impressions with- 
 
 out reference or date. 
 
128 A GREAT LIE 
 
 He touched the harsh—almost curded— 
 surface of the notes and drew back in 
 revolt. 
 
 “T cannot play,” he said; but the melody 
 throbbed through his moving fingers to tell 
 him that he lied. 
 
 “Bosh!” she cried. ‘‘ You shall have some 
 whisky, and then——-Come, Ned,” she broke 
 off, ‘I know it’s got to be, and that though, 
 maybe, you've quarrelled with her you'll make 
 it up, or she will, and I know what’s in you 
 that ought to make me glad to see the last 
 of you, but your face wins, Ned—wins all 
 along the line. I don’t know what your 
 dodge is with them slops or how you got 
 them marks; but it don’t matter, Ned, your 
 face wins, my dear. I said it to myself that 
 first day we met on the undercliff. I say 
 it now.” 
 
 Not much time had passed since his re- 
 vulsion of fear; but he—who gave himself 
 up like dust to wind—was whirled into another 
 
 mood. 
 
A GREAT LIE 129 
 
 After all, he was here: ‘‘committed,” he 
 whispered to himself. If, moreover, he could 
 reason that he was two he was certainly one. . 
 And if it were derogatory to say two in one, 
 what of that? He had not boasted much 
 of individuality in the old days. 
 
 Tempting was the border of the abyss; 
 resolutely to break from methodism into the 
 downy chaos of the elemental dark, was to 
 pass from the fidgetty human into the 
 paganly divine. 
 
 He kissed her, and her almost biting 
 response excelled his delirium in the sugges- 
 tion of hunger. 
 
 “What will you be doing, Ned, when 
 you have married the angel?” she inquired. 
 
 “T shall be living downstairs, I suppose,” 
 he replied with forced humour. 
 
 There was silence. She laid her hand on 
 his: it felt boneless and clammy. 
 
 “Straight, Ned,” she said, ‘it’s odd how 
 double-faced you men are, when the face 
 
 wins—like yours. But we want you the 
 I 
 
130 A GREAT LIE 
 
 more, the more shabbily you behave. We 
 pay for your fine faces. Ah, Ned, Ned, 
 and, because one is hard-up, a few pounds 
 will make it all right, won’t they ?—Strike 
 me silly, man,” she cried abruptly, “but I’ve 
 given you the blues!” 
 
 ‘I. own I. am bothered,” said Edmun@ 
 as indeed he was, with another man’s 
 history tacked on to his own. 
 
 Hereupon she bent over him, and pressed 
 her cheek coaxingly to a bruise on_ his; 
 perhaps knowing how the contact would 
 agitate him. 
 
 “You always were good-natured, Ned— 
 you are thinking what will become of me. 
 Oh, I’m all right. I shall really make dresses 
 this time. You can get me some’ come 
 missions, can't you? It makes one good to 
 sew, she added, in a tone as_ incredulous 
 as the words were precise; ‘it makes one 
 patient and humdrum. And then, the tips 
 of one’s fingers get corny, and one’s mouth 
 
 gets pursed with holding pins, and one’s 
 
A GREAT LIE 131 
 
 eyes get the saucy look taken out of em 
 with peering into the stitches; and_ then, 
 one gets the musty smell of stuff into the 
 room where one lives, and nobody’s nothing 
 more than a clothes-horse.” 
 
 “Don't,” said Edmund. 
 
 She patted his cheek. “I’m not blaming 
 you, old boy. It’s a way to live, and | 
 know you done what you can.” 
 
 Edmund stared sombrely at the sewing- 
 machine. Would it ever _ subdue this 
 woman? Was it well to wish it? She patted 
 him again, and his blood obliterated his 
 thoughts. 
 
 “YT think, you know,” she said confiden- 
 tially, “that I shall get interested in my soul 
 after a time. When one’s locked up, one’s 
 soul is the little mouse that goes scratch, 
 scratch ; and the catly devil is outside; and 
 one could talk with the little mouse, if one 
 could understand it. I can’t. There’s that 
 Mr Lyminge knows a thing or two. I shall 
 
 try him. But while you live, Ned, how can 
 
132 A GREAT LIE 
 
 I? For you said... well, never mind what 
 you said. But I believe you love me, Ned, 
 and that we met because you wanted me, 
 even now!” 
 
 “Ned is past wanting anything of women, 
 now, he said indignantly, but too deeply 
 immersed in an appreciation of this intrigue 
 to communicate his meaning more clearly. 
 
 “You are sulky; \Ned)ishe) said," bute 
 don’t blame you. You must have some 
 poison at once.” 
 
 Heedless of the outrage on her landlady 
 involved in summoning her at this time, she 
 rang the bell, and while she was arranging 
 some things about the room, he rose and 
 looked straight into the likeness of his alter- 
 ego. What was the meaning of his death 
 and judgment? Was the same pit laid for 
 him, the whilom Christian enthusiast, that 
 was dug for that cynic-in-decay? Was he 
 to take up the thread of some greater lie 
 than this which enveloped him? Was he to 
 
 take up the thread of that greater lie, and 
 
A GREAT LIE 133 
 
 coil it about the feet of women? It was 
 coward’s work ! 
 
 “T am going,” he said. 
 
 ‘“Not now,” she pleaded. 
 
 For answer, she opened the window and 
 threw out his hat. 
 
 fhave you, she said, ‘ There!” 
 
 Susceptible though he was to all the 
 humiliation of the position, he fell by 
 deliberate intention; since he mentally sur- 
 rendered himself to her while looking before 
 and behind the meaning of his conduct. 
 He was, indeed, in that condition which, by 
 the commanding arrogance of the senses, 
 reduces any reasoning, however clear, to a 
 mere extravagance of brain-action, unbearable 
 to look back upon. 
 
 At that moment the door opened, and 
 the landlady appeared with a tray and the 
 angry exclamation on her lips that she had 
 left it on a slab outside the door, and that, 
 if she hadn’t happened to be ironing away 
 
 the sins or creases of habit, she would have 
 
134 A GREAT LIE 
 
 been abed and asleep like any ordinary com- 
 pound of flesh and blood. 
 
 But before she could utter a word Alice 
 was saying, “This is an old friend, Mrs 
 Faudel. Bring another glass, please.” 
 
 With a white face, Edmund turned round 
 and faced the new-comer. She saw the 
 features of a man drowned and dead, with 
 bruises on the mouth and cheeks, such as the 
 relentless rocks inflict on them whom the sea 
 has eschewed. She gave a shriek, and the 
 tray fell, and the spirit ran down the floor. 
 
 “The fool!” cried Alice, and followed the 
 flying woman, who had locked herself into 
 her room, and would not be spoken to again 
 that night. 
 
 Edmund stopped a moment, dazed. Then 
 he seized the photograph of Edmund-the- 
 Minor and broke the glass. Then, con- 
 fronted with mere jagged fragments and 
 scratched card-board, he grew cold in the 
 midst of the melodrama; for there was no 
 
 end, discoverable by mere bad temper, to the 
 
A GREAT LIE 135 
 
 chilling sneer of the soul that regarded him 
 behind its presentment. 
 
 Realising that, he leaped through the 
 window into the street. 
 
 It was long past midnight. He could not 
 go home: he slept till the dawning on the 
 Ps.) 
 
 On waking, he shed bitter tears, all of 
 them for himself. He wept because he felt 
 depressed in body: he did not rise to the 
 stature of the hills) He wept because he 
 had fallen into atramentous depths of himself, 
 fallen without profit, with nothing but the 
 fall to think over. He wept—if he had 
 dared to know it!—because the woman who 
 had brought him to this pass was not a lady, 
 and because the house she lived in was not 
 a villa) He wept because he was afraid he 
 would meet her again. He wept because he 
 was afraid to meet any one. He wept be- 
 cause he was only one of the two tenants 
 of the body called by their joint name. He 
 wept because he had flouted high heaven, 
 
136 A GREAT LIE 
 
 which gazed with omniscient ageless eyes far 
 above him even unto the rim of the sea. 
 Ah! and most of all he wept because he 
 would not say, ‘‘‘ Father, I have sinned.’” 
 “That, at least, is impossible, because | 
 have not sinned, and there is no sin,” he 
 murmured ; but the inmost law of his being 
 
 was broken, and he knew that he lied. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 His steps were indeterminate and feeble as 
 he moved homewards. He had violated that 
 sense of exclusiveness—the ‘“‘feeling-I” of 
 the metaphysician—and was henceforth in 
 - promiscuous relationship with all men. Some- 
 thing had shouted in his body imperiously 
 and commanded him, and it was the common 
 voice of the multitude, and it was he A 
 quality at once inspiring and restraining, 
 which had distinguished Edmund-the-Ugly, 
 and made that person fastidious and finely- 
 sensitive, was not present in Edmund-the- 
 Beautiful. © Edmund-the-Beautiful had no 
 
 desire to select before he enjoyed, if selection 
 137 
 
138 A GREAT LIE 
 
 implied delay. Edmund-the-Ugly accounted 
 a lie a high price to pay for a day’s dis- 
 obedience; Edmund-the-Beautiful was a lie. 
 That fact estranged these two persons almost 
 beyond mutual recognition. 
 
 Nevertheless, unreadiness to lie as well as 
 injured pride was a cause of the slowness of 
 Edmund's return. He seemed to have ac- 
 complished a ‘thousand and one _ nights’ 
 entertainments” before he hit upon a plausible 
 story. 
 
 There was, however, no present need to 
 tell it: his father was worse. He merely 
 assured Mrs Weaverling that he regretted 
 his unavoidable detention, and, after a hasty 
 toilet, he slunk out of the cottage. 
 
 ‘tI ‘have’ no\place’there,” he thouchta9iim 
 am too nervous to go up and down with 
 this illness. I am too conscientious. I 
 saddle my mind with my father’s imprudence, 
 and it makes me ill. I don’t want to hear 
 bulletins. It makes me anticipate the last. 
 
 I want to forget, ignore. I want endless 
 
A GREAT LIE 139 
 
 excitement or an ocean’s depth of rest— 
 sleep.” 
 
 He found it hard to face the artist, who 
 read him through at a glance, half amusedly, 
 half contemptuously. 
 
 “Are you going to put all you see of me 
 in that picture?” inquired Edmund. 
 
 “Only the surface, and not the damaged 
 part of that: for you've been fighting, by 
 Jove! The substratum I shall omit altogether. 
 It’s as plain as a pike, and as beautiful and 
 as interesting. I see it swimming up in your 
 eyes.” 
 
 ‘‘ Indeed.” 
 
 “Yes, but it don’t make you any more 
 like Apollo, I fancy.” 
 
 “What is the difference?” 
 
 “Apollo is Passion seated on a throne with 
 Beauty for his wedded wife.” 
 
 band |e 
 
 “You are Beauty seated on a throne with 
 Passion for your paramour. And you are 
 
 ashamed of her!” 
 
140 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “How soe” 
 
 “You are furtive, tremulous. You sit in 
 judgment on yourself. No one judges Apollo, 
 not even Apollo. If it were otherwise, do 
 you suppose that Marsyas, by one red 
 wound, might inflict his pain on the world 
 to-day ?” 
 
 ‘‘T suppose not.” 
 
 “No, sir. The gods never hush things 
 up. Their reparation is not repentance but 
 pity.” 
 
 “And I,” said Edmund softly, “must 
 repent. | 
 
 “Every man,” said the artist, ‘“who would - 
 be immortal, or know the gods, must, with 
 his own chisel, in patient agony, chip away 
 his own callosity. Every man—and yet | 
 had an idea that you were not a man!” He 
 stopped, smilingly. 
 
 “There is a point,” said Edmund, ‘‘ beyond 
 which a man cannot laugh at himself. I am 
 at that point.” 
 
 “A man laughing at himself,” said the 
 
A GREAT LIE 14! 
 
 artist, “is, at any stage of his life, a weird 
 figure. But you may laugh at me—at others. 
 Winere is no harm in. that.” 
 
 “What did you mean,” asked Edmund 
 abruptly, ‘‘by saying that you did not think 
 I was a man?” 
 
 “In common with others,” replied the artist, 
 “T thought that you might be Edmund-the- 
 Minor—I allude to his verse—come back 
 after a quarrel with Virgil or Dante.” 
 
 “With a better knowledge of hell than 
 either, perhaps ?” 
 
 “Who shall say?” returned the artist, 
 hesitating for a repartee. 
 
 “For him,” said Edmund, “hell has no 
 boundaries—even now; but he is not pre- 
 cluded from feeling acutely what he knows 
 imperfectly.” 
 
 When the sitting was over, Edmund went 
 to the tailor’s to have his new coat tried on, 
 and stumbled down to the sea, ‘‘aweary and 
 aweary.” 
 
 The words ran into a tune in his head, 
 
142 A GREAT LIE 
 
 and he could not avoid showing a little of 
 the affectation of a man who makes sad 
 music to please a paying crowd. 
 
 Everybody, indeed, seemed to stare at 
 him to-day; everybody seemed impelled to 
 choose his boat—ladies and gentlemen and 
 children. 
 
 And this day, whether it was because 
 the calm still air carried holy lightnings 
 down from the heavenly blue into dull eyes 
 and grudging hearts, or because the more 
 gracious of our kind were abroad by a coinci- 
 dence of choice, the ladies whom he rowed 
 were instinct with an ethereal charm that 
 reproached him for choosing the base instead ~ 
 of the noble in others that were women, too. 
 He could not help looking behind, even 
 when his boat scudded over a path strewn 
 fair with sunbeams. And a child stretching 
 out arms to him in candid love of his beauty 
 nearly drew the manhood from him and 
 exposed the crying babe. 
 
 He responded by singing a sensuous song 
 
A GREAT LIE 143 
 
 of his poetical namesake in a mellow voice 
 that made the child’s mother marvel. 
 
 ‘“‘ Row, row, swift or slow— 
 Sky above and sea below ; 
 The path of the day is wan and faint: 
 The face of the sun, like an aureoled saint, 
 Pallidly golden, shines like snow. 
 Drift, drift, slow or swift— 
 The clouds are the hands of a child uplift, 
 Pretending to hide glad eyes that peep 
 At the chrysolite plain of the darkling deep.” 
 
 The woman started violently, and it re- 
 quired all Edmund’s skill to avoid an upset. 
 “What do you know of that poet?” she 
 demanded. 
 
 “Less than he knows of me,’ replied 
 Edmund drily. 
 
 “You might have been brothers,” she said, 
 adding to herself, ‘“‘] must tell Virginia of 
 this ;” and because he had pleased her child, 
 and because she wished to test his behaviour 
 under obligation, she paid him twice his 
 fare. 
 
 “She has measured my worth exactly,” 
 
144 A GREAT LIE 
 
 thought Edmund as he put the money in his 
 pocket, and hated the precision of justice in 
 this our world. 
 
 It was a sign of his greatness—not as a 
 liar, but as an immortal—that the failure of 
 his new manhood renewed his devotion to 
 the things that are alive at the roots. An 
 ugly phase of his life was developing with 
 his exaction of indemnity for past suffering, 
 and his reception of immediate reward for 
 service rendered. He was artist enough to 
 look with dismay at a career made up of 
 commercial transactions. 
 
 But there was one thing, false or true, 
 which was not a commercial transaction— 
 salvation. Desperately as he had _ believed 
 in it in the past, insincerely as he had trifled 
 with it in the present, its conception was too 
 pure, its fruit too lovely and wholesome, for 
 it to assume, even in the misty region of 
 Doubt, a face less fair than the proven 
 truths of the world. 
 
 “What distinction it gives people to be 
 
A GREAT LIE 145 
 
 good,” thought Edmund, as he found himself 
 in the class-room awaiting the opening of the 
 band-meeting, together with the girl who 
 had “found the Lord” last Sunday evening. 
 She was the daughter of a washerwoman, 
 and it seems a less high and mighty thing 
 to be a washerwoman than an artistic or 
 titled whitewasher; but, as he saw her look- 
 ing through the east window, upon the hills 
 that wore the riband of the sunset, she seemed 
 with her eyes to traverse a distance greater 
 than aught that caste may set up between 
 man ard man. 
 
 She said ‘‘good evening,” and continued 
 her outward gazing. ‘“‘She has not seen 
 me,” thought Edmund. Yesterday, he would 
 arrogantly have thought: ‘‘She has seen a lie 
 and believed it.” 
 
 Presently in came Miss Grainger; and the 
 feeling that he had acted badly to her made 
 him hard again. 
 
 “We met at chapel,” he said as though to 
 
 say: ‘We have not seen one another since.” 
 K 
 
146 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “And afterwards?” she hazarded. 
 ‘Oh, that was the ‘meeting of the waters,’ ” 
 he replied. 
 
 ‘‘Good-gracious, what have you done with 
 your face?” was all she said. 
 
 Then Old Brewster came in, but Edmund 
 did not retreat; he felt it was not wise to 
 shun the seer; besides, the latter seemed 
 confused at seeing him there. 
 
 ‘One can leave when one likes, thank 
 goodness,” said Edmund to Miss Grainger ; 
 ‘but in the chapel I was afraid of becom- 
 ing a part of the building—the pews are so 
 sticky.” 
 
 Old Brewster was praying: the convulsive 
 movement of his head stopping as though 
 a devil in it were exorcised. The little wriggly, 
 final spasms were like the death-agony of 
 a hanging man. 
 
 Suddenly, the chattering ceased, for the 
 evangelist had entered. ‘Let us pray,” he 
 said, and fell on his knees. 
 
 He prayed as he always prayed, as though 
 
A GREAT LIE 147 
 
 it were for the first time, and his knees 
 were on the steps of the Throne. 
 
 Edmund might pray as one from whom 
 prayer is wrested by dire necessity for grace: 
 this man prayed as one who by grace has 
 an unbroken communion with God. Prayer 
 flowed from him not less freely because he 
 had prayed with his family in the morning, 
 and alone in the twilight. Permission to 
 pray, Edmund dare almost think, was _ the 
 sovereign answer to all prayer. 
 
 Here and now the evangelist prayed for 
 tolerance and charity, for childlikeness, for 
 humility—for Christlikeness. 
 
 “We know, Almighty God,” he said, “ that 
 to be like Thy dear Son is the only way to 
 be beautiful before Thee. The passing shows 
 of the world are vanities in Thy sight; let 
 them be so in ours. Let us not be envious 
 of others that enjoy them, or exhibit them ; 
 let us leave the judgment to Thee. Thou 
 art He of Whom the Psalmist said: ‘The 
 
 heavens shall declare his righteousness: for 
 
148 A GREAT LIE 
 
 God is judge himself.’ Thou art the Father 
 of Whose Son, our Saviour, it was written 
 by the prophet : ‘He shall not judge after the 
 sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the 
 hearing of his ears.’ O God, save us from 
 the pride that judges by sight or sound, from 
 the feebleness that frets because the wicked 
 flourish in the courts of iniquity and are 
 held in honour and repute. ‘Let us not 
 judge one another any more: but judge this 
 rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or 
 an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.’ ” 
 Familiar as he was with band meetings, 
 Edmund knew that the applicability of this 
 prayer to the quarrel between himself and 
 Old Brewster was intentional on the evan- 
 gelist’s part. As it was, he would rather have 
 been judged by Old Brewster than have had 
 this justice done him. He caught the evan- 
 gelist’s eyes resting upon him with a tender 
 smile in them, as though to say, ‘‘ You have 
 done well to forgive and forget ; your presence 
 
 here has cleared you in my soul;” but Old 
 
A GREAT LIE 149 
 
 Brewster had shut his eyelids tightly and kept 
 them thus. 
 
 The kindness in all the women’s faces— 
 these fragile women, fresh from their humble 
 work in shop or factory, or their own busy 
 homes—filled him with remorse. 
 
 He could not sing the strident song which 
 they softened with their heart’s love, standing 
 the while. He kept his seat in mute confession 
 of his inability, and there crept over him, and, 
 as it were, shone from him a kind of ecstasy 
 of estrangement from the dear people about 
 him, and the precious faith which they held 
 and declared. 
 
 They saw the outer-man, the reverent, the 
 applausive, and admired and pitied him; but 
 he knew the inner-man that withdrew vainly 
 from thoughts that the wind and sea repudi- 
 ated, thoughts that were surely to be the 
 prey of the cavernous depths that brought 
 them into being. 
 
 What did it mean, this subduing of his 
 
 power to lie unto himself? 
 
180 A GREAT LIE 
 
 He stared with humble wide eyes at the 
 faces which glowed in the Presence, as they 
 conceived it, of God. O! he was willing to 
 think that there was no escape from their 
 love, no escape from their faith, salvation 
 from their prayers! 
 
 The homely irradiated, the natural spiritual- 
 ised, the flesh reincarnated mysteriously, 
 invisibly, as the flower is transmuted by the 
 dew—‘‘ Have you seen it?” he demanded of 
 the whole world. 
 
 They were kneeling now, he among them, 
 by the forms. 
 
 To him, drunk with the lees of life and yet 
 thirsty with the husks, to be among these 
 people was the position of a starving beggar 
 at a banquet, anxious, beyond sway of con- 
 science, to steal. 
 
 Yet he remembered having been fed... 
 ah! how long ago... and not a fortnight 
 either. ‘O God!” he murmured, “teach 
 me not to think.” 
 
 One after another those about him acknow- 
 
A GREAT LIE 151 
 
 ledged their own beggarliness in a former 
 life, and invited all other beggars to eat and 
 drink, nay, more—to be whole, to be purified 
 in a quenchless flame, to be visual in an in- 
 extinguishable light. Only this—he must 
 believe. 
 
 All of these, but one, had said the same 
 thing fifty times a year to his brethren 
 on his bended knees, but the knees were 
 never weary, and the news might never 
 stale. 
 
 And now the washerwoman’s daughter was 
 telling, in her own way, how she had thrown 
 the door of her heart open, and had met the 
 splendid Lover on the threshold ; but he could 
 not, O! he could not! 
 
 He tried laughter as an antidote. Her 
 aspiration was really very funny. She had 
 a way of tacking on h’s to vowels in the 
 middle, as well as at the beginning of her 
 words. As thus: ‘I feel rehanimated—the 
 heevil is gone, and I know He is sufficient 
 
 for hall my needs, wotsohever they may be. 
 
152 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘|H jall the vain things that charm me most, I 
 sacrifice them to His blood.’” 
 
 ‘She will save on her ribbons, she means,” 
 muttered Edmund; but he knew that he— 
 not she—was the hypocrite. 
 
 Or he tried to divert himself by the strange 
 harsh counterpoint of the prayers, a develop- 
 ment caused by the evangelist’s ecstatic praises 
 of God being thrown across the loud admis- 
 sions of favour and grace made by kneeling 
 brothers. 
 
 But laughter availed him nothing, for 
 gospel-truth sounded clearly under it all, if 
 not above it—as it would through a hurri- 
 cane of h’s, or a babel of litanies, if needs 
 were. 
 
 In fact, his attempt at laughter only re- 
 discovered the snob in him, that stale product 
 of education and prosperity ; and What am I? 
 the mad Chilonian question, made him sicken, 
 even while he sneered at it. 
 
 And vainly his surface beauty flashed to 
 
 the authentic wisdom and peace of the Metho- 
 
A GREAT LIE 153 
 
 dists’ faces; for their ignorant praise of him 
 was nothing, and the angels were looking on. 
 
 No cruel myrmidon thrust him into outer 
 darkness—and Old Brewster had his eyes 
 shut—but he wore the darkness as a robe. 
 It was on his hands to mar his deeds; it 
 was on his feet to trip them up in the race for 
 freedom ; it was over his eyes—open as they 
 might be—to blot them; it covered him 
 altogether; he was aged in it. 
 
 “Perhaps Brother Brewster has something 
 to say,’ suggested the evangelist. 
 
 In the staccato fashion, which cost him so 
 many spasms, the old man said: 
 
 lord. « when |... see ‘wot. others 
 See eteach me how to spik . . .\or .).. 
 ho’d my tongue.” 
 
 “Teach us all,” said the class-leader, ‘‘ not 
 to mistake suspiciousness for a gift of seeing 
 clearly.” 
 
 ‘‘ Amen,” said Old Brewster. 
 
 “Have you anything to say, Brother 
 
 Edmund?” inquired the evangelist. 
 
154 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ‘‘T cannot pray aloud,” he murmured, and 
 his silence was filled by the class-leader 
 who thanked God that they were all saved. 
 
 His meaning stoned Edmund who was 
 revealed to himself as clearly as though he 
 stood on a floor of chrysolite. 
 
 He was too sick to pray. Alone, he 
 searched the miserable cramped cellars of 
 his brain where was no sun, and only a 
 trembling taper to show dimly the creatures 
 that crawled on the mildewy floor. They— 
 the miser-hoard of his insatiate memory— 
 were so foul and ugly, that he needed to 
 turn the door—the beautiful door that men 
 and women loved to behold—upon them, 
 and lock them up. 
 
 There was another hymn, incomparable 
 with the last. Ah! it was the voice of the 
 
 shining he saw in their faces: 
 
 ‘In sorrow He’s my comfort, in trouble He’s my stay ; 
 He tells me ev’ry care on Him to roll ; 
 He’s the ‘Lily of the Valley,’ the Bright and Morning Star ; 
 
 He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul!” 
 
A GREAT LIE 155 
 
 “Ten thousand!” echoed the evangelist, 
 “if it were ten million, it would be the 
 same. There is a beauty of the flower; be 
 glad in its day—it is but a day. There is 
 a beauty forged out of suffering and self- 
 sacrifice, and love that is everlasting: give 
 that the worship of your lives—consecrate 
 yourselves to its service; for that is the 
 beauty of Christ Jesus Who died for you, 
 for you, for you.” 
 
 He pointed his finger gravely. 
 
 “This beauty is in the inmost part, from 
 whence it moves outward : it cannot, therefore, 
 be put off and on, or drawn aside by any 
 man. He who has it has done with pride, 
 for he has given himself up; he has accepted 
 the sacrifice on Calvary. Before that Cross 
 on which the Son of God submitted Himself 
 to Death, dare we carry any of the nails 
 that pierced Him? Pride is one of them; 
 selfishness is one of them; hypocrisy is one 
 of them. Let us pray ‘to be nothing, nothing’ 
 
 in comparison with His will.” 
 
156 A GREAT LIE 
 
 With eyes still shut, Old Brewster said 
 Amen: | 
 
 Then the evangelist solemnly pronounced 
 the apostolic benediction of St Paul. 
 
 He had scarcely finished, when a strong. 
 hand sent the door flying inwards, and a 
 voice cried, “Is the mester here?” 
 
 The evangelist stood in the doorway, and 
 talked with the speaker, and Edmund heard 
 murmurings of ‘‘a_ girl up Transpontine 
 way ... taking in a ghost . . . about scared 
 Outrofeherswitsaswer 
 
 The flash of horror, by which he saw his 
 lie pale to transparency, afflicted him with 
 a feeling of bodily ineptitude amounting to 
 sickness; but it did not confuse his percep- 
 tion of the small-talk that passed around 
 him. 
 
 The treasurer of the building fund cheerily 
 remarked to the class-leader that the last 
 chapel-tea realised one pound seven and 
 threepence ha’penny towards clearing off 
 
 the debt of four hundred pounds on that 
 
A GREAT LIE 157 
 
 edifice. Two others discussed the right of 
 a somewhat officious young man to attend 
 the business-committee of the Wesley Guild. 
 
 Nothing but her affection for Edmund 
 prevented Miss Grainger from joining this 
 duo; but as her voice, faintly coquettish, 
 sounded in his ears, he heard under it with 
 painful distinctness the coward in him hope 
 —QO with what wicked vehemence!—that the 
 woman about to be saved might not, after 
 all, be his fellow-adventurer. It would be 
 SO inconvenient if she were saved, before 
 or after that eruption of self - consciousness 
 which is called confession, so very incon- 
 venient | 
 
 He was clever enough to lash himself 
 with sarcasm, and at the same time attend 
 to Miss Grainger. “I will have her for a 
 partisan, he thought; then, “she is not 
 worth it;” then, ‘“‘she is worth a dozen of 
 me; then, ‘she is intolerable ;” then, ‘she 
 shall cure me of thinking.” 
 
 There is a way, between the hills and a 
 
158 A GREAT LIE 
 
 hedge, near that chapel, and it leads to the 
 sea. 
 
 Edmund walked with his companion along 
 this way. Suddenly, he begged that she 
 would halt a moment. 
 
 They halted, and, forgetting her by sheer 
 force of will, he gazed at the hills that lay 
 as though carved into everlasting rest under 
 the threat of doom. Calm and mute, and 
 tremendous they lay, under the celestial fields 
 of paling primrose that the scattered bushes 
 of sepia clouds separated from the luminous 
 blue of the larger heaven. The moon was 
 fully possessed of the glory she wins from 
 the sun. The canopy over her appalled her 
 not, and him it could not delude. “I see 
 but rain in the worst,” he mused: ‘I scent 
 afar the sweetness of refreshed thirst in flower 
 and weed alike.’ ‘The bat that struck aslant 
 him to the inner side of the hedge felt no 
 more, no less, he truly believed. Anon, the 
 moon was hidden, but there was a smile of 
 
 light all round her. ‘God rest them that 
 
A GREAT LIE 159 
 
 fear for souls,’ thought Edmund. ‘My soul! 
 Were I not at harmony even with the insects, 
 I would say: ‘What irony is this!’—I, who 
 see but rain in the worst.” 
 
 Then he remembered his guilt and stamped 
 his foot on the ground. 
 
 The girl had seen nothing, but she laughed 
 at the stamp of the foot. ‘Why, you are 
 quite a savage!” she said. 
 
 ‘‘T would I were,” he retorted. 
 
 She laughed again—a gurgling, indefinite, 
 giggling sort of laugh which irritated him. 
 
 “To you,” he remarked, walking the while 
 at a swinging pace, “to you it would seem 
 monstrous, | suppose, to live like a woad- 
 painted Briton amid these hills and hollows. 
 You are right; every kind of liar—land-owner 
 and land-protector—would rise up to hector 
 you. And special journeys would be made 
 to see a man as he is and bully him for 
 it.” 
 
 She found him as unintelligible to-day when 
 
 he was ironical as she had found him yester- 
 
160 A GREAT LIE 
 
 day when he was sentimental and talked of 
 asphodels. 
 
 She laughed, stopped, laughed again, then 
 giggled, and giggled, and giggled. 
 
 He said nothing; but, between laugh and 
 giggle, she occasionally said: ‘‘ Excuse me, but 
 I can't help it,’ and he begged her not to 
 mention it. 
 
 For her part, she was quite happy, and liked 
 being with him whether she understood him 
 or not. 
 
 She only wanted to feel his personality— 
 the pulse of a strong life. That she was 
 to have correspondences to him in herself 
 never entered her simple head. “I’m not 
 clever,” she would have said, ‘but I love 
 him.” 
 
 She was egoist enough to think that that 
 said all that was to be said. She was pleased 
 with herself for having indulged him in his 
 mood of meditation, bored though she had 
 been. She promised herself that she would 
 
 always indulge him in such harmless freaks 
 
A GREAT LIE TOr 
 
 of abstraction; ‘“‘and he shall talk as much 
 as he likes.” She did not, however, trouble 
 to inquire if she could stimulate or change 
 his moods by moods of her own. 
 
 Essentially, she could not. She was intel- 
 lectually empty, and, deriving colossal satis- 
 faction from the mere aspect of him as she 
 saw it, she had neither the will nor the power 
 to study him more. 
 
 They parted in an interval between a laugh 
 and a wave of the hand. 
 
 “Good-bye,” he said. ‘I shall be glad to 
 remember that laugh when I have left this 
 place.” 
 
 “J never heard of that,” she said. 
 
 “You had food enough for your laughter,” 
 he replied. ! 
 
 “We never walked to the sea,” thought 
 Edmund, afterwards, “and with her I never 
 would—except as an experiment.” 
 
 The Great Lie grew in worth and import- 
 ance against her frivolity. 
 
 When he reached home, indeed, he was 
 L 
 
162 A GREAT LIE 
 
 quite ready for his supper, and, as his father 
 was asleep, Mrs Weaverling prepared it with- 
 out the tragic haste which kills appetite. So 
 Edmund lounged back in his chair, and, while 
 his cocoa was being stirred, put his hand into 
 his pocket mechanically and drew forth the 
 dolly-grass. He looked at it stupidly for a 
 moment. That innocent plant had been, if 
 he had known, a dearer keepsake than the 
 ineffaceable stamp of greedy lips. But he 
 could not remember the one without the 
 other; and as the miserable incongruities of 
 that parti-coloured yesterday dismayed his 
 inward vision, he lingered over the thought 
 that the euphemism of “godlike” does 
 not sufficiently conceal the odium of the 
 cad. 
 
 At this moment, Mrs Weaverling, cup in 
 hand, espied the dolly-grass as it lay droopingly 
 on the table. 
 
 “Who brought that in?” she cried indig- 
 nantly. ‘“ Did you?” 
 
 “T did,” said Edmund. 
 
A GREAT LIE 163 
 
 “Well, you ought to have known better,” 
 cried the agitated woman as she _ snatched 
 up the blades and threw them on tthe fire. 
 “You ought to know better than to bring the 
 bad luck into the house.” 
 
 Edmund sat still, pondering the irony of 
 his position. To him, the mischief - maker, ' 
 the fous et origo mati, she ministered ; the ab- 
 solutely harmless weeds she destroyed. And 
 in attributing to them, in the light of an 
 ugly superstition, the influence of sophis- 
 ticated sinners, she betrayed that demoniac 
 quality of mind which creates the thing it 
 dreads. 
 
 “To think,” mused Edmund, in an agony 
 of contempt, ‘that I was born beneath a 
 horseshoe, of a woman who never walked 
 under a ladder, and though she cannot for- 
 get the result of these precautions, she still 
 believes in the Devil and dolly-grass. And 
 yet there are people who persist in declaring 
 that religion is not instinctive in the human 
 
 }?? 
 
 breast 
 
164 A GREAT LIE 
 
 Then a great pity for his mother welled 
 into his heart and into his eyes, and he said 
 “good-night” to her so gently as to consume 
 
 her with self-reproach. 
 
CELA DEE Rix 
 
 Anxiety for his father decreased with the 
 morning’s report of an improvement in his 
 condition, but Edmund’s fear of the woman 
 about to be saved increased sevenfold. His 
 nerves shook at the prospect of an attack on 
 his own soul, under the heading of an attempt 
 to rescue it. Indeed, he felt positively ill 
 with trepidation when, in the course of Wed- 
 nesday morning, he found himself arrested in 
 the neighbourhood of the Lox Marche. 
 
 “Going down to row, my man?” 
 
 Edmund assented. 
 
 ‘“Hard work this weather.” 
 
 Edmund assented. 
 
 “ Are you open to take up another job?” 
 
 Edmund’s interlocutor turned out to be of 
 165 
 
166 A GREAT LIE 
 
 that consummate, if not illustrious, species of 
 diplomatist termed shopwalker. 
 
 ‘“T don’t mean work, but I do mean pay,” 
 he proceeded gently, leading the way to a 
 private! bar. “The -fact iis,» he resumes 
 when the presence of two half-quaffed glasses 
 of beer betokened the existence of confi- 
 dential relations between them, ‘‘the fact is 
 that our window-dresser was arranging our 
 waxen bicyclist the other day when he caught 
 sight of you. ‘The very man for an ad.,’ he 
 sang out. Guvwnor hears him, and told me 
 to keep my eye open for you. Thirty bob 
 a week, and all you've got to do is to ride 
 that bike, and show by the way that it 
 don’t spoil the chest of a man. It won't 
 carry you a step. All you've got to do is to 
 work the pedals.” 
 
 “Anything more?” 
 
 The shopwalker clapped him on the shoulder. 
 “Just this, which you can’t help: look as 
 devilishly like that young napper-dandy of a 
 
 poet that the women rave over as you do 
 
A GREAT LIE 167 
 
 this moment. . . . You don’t know who I 
 mean? Well, he’d have been one of our best 
 customers—if he’d only paid up. If we have 
 you in our window, dressed like a gentleman, 
 youll puzzle the whole town.” 
 
 The sunlight flashed down a tottering stone 
 Staircase into the street and across the floor 
 of the public-house. Horribly real looked 
 the marks and splotches of alcohol and ex- 
 pectoration thereupon, and dismally unex- 
 hilarating the motionless amber of the half- 
 quaffed beer. 
 
 It tasted to Edmund as though it were 
 vile, or he were vile to condescend to it. 
 The coarse conviviality of the tap-room, lack- 
 ing the illusion of gassy splendour, ransacked 
 and laid bare by its enemy the sun, oppressed 
 him with a leaden weight of tragedy. 
 
 “Call it a fairy-tale,” he thought to himself. 
 “Three ingredients fill that goblet, Mirth, 
 Stupor, Headache. If I drink to be merry, 
 I am deaf to the music of which I was 
 
 moulded ; if I drink to be stupid—” 
 
168 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “You will have another?” 
 
 The shopwalker was speaking blandly. 
 
 ‘You have answered my question,” said 
 Edmund. 
 
 “What question?” 
 
 “That if I drink to be stupid, I shall have 
 another.” 
 
 “JT only ask you to quench your thirst. 
 
 . Well, as to my firm’s offer—thirty bob 
 
 a week—have you made up your mind? Yes 
 or No?” 
 
 ‘If I said Yes, I should have another and 
 another and another... .” 
 
 “Well?” 
 
 ST wont.! 
 
 ‘‘T wish you had said so earlier,’ grumbled 
 the shopwalker, wiping his moustache. 
 
 ‘‘T almost wish I had said so a week ago,” 
 replied Edmund. 
 
 “J have no time for fooling,” said the 
 shopwalker, and he passed stiffly out of the 
 shop. His fine square forehead was full of 
 
 haberdashery—he was a statesman in his own 
 
A GREAT LIE 169 
 
 way ; and his mouth was curved to the flicker- 
 ing smile of the persistent courtier of 
 commerce. 
 
 “The fellow is a fool,” he reflected, ‘“‘ hand- 
 some by accident; what’s the use of such an 
 accident?” 7 
 
 Edmund dallied a moment that he might 
 be cleanly rid of him, and then followed. Out- 
 side, leaning against the wall, was a red-faced 
 man with a tuft of reddish beard at his chin’s 
 tip. Edmund felt impelled to speak to him 
 in response to something half-shy but appeal- 
 ing in the man’s attitude. 
 
 “You want a drink?” he inquired. 
 
 ‘“Thank’ee, I could do with a drop,” said 
 the man. ‘Excuse me being slow, I’m blind.” 
 The fishy pulps in the small orbits fringed 
 with sandy hair told as much. 
 
 The man drank his beer eagerly, but 
 betrayed a sense that a doubt of his sincerity 
 lurked in the easy complacence of Edmund’s 
 patronage. He pulled his eye-sockets side- 
 
 ways to enhance their lack of visual meaning, 
 
170 A GREAT LIE 
 
 and was hideous where he had been piti- 
 able. 
 
 “You see I am quite blind,” he said. 
 
 “But I am not,” said Edmund ruefully. 
 He extended his hand and grasped the limp 
 one that was not ready. 
 
 “Gawd bless you!” exclaimed the mendicant, 
 in a burst of good-fellowship. 
 
 “It is nothing,’ said Edmund’ *“"Yea 
 should drink like a fish: it is your due.” 
 
 He left the mendicant hopefully waiting 
 for another drink. He lashed himself with 
 the thought: ‘‘ the pleasure of the man with- 
 out eyes is my pleasure. What is it that I 
 have loved in myself all along? what have I 
 cherished? It is the glutton and not the god.” 
 
 It was consoling to think, however, that 
 the godlike things, independent of man’s 
 gluttony, were near him, up these crooked 
 steps, past those bureaus of pinchbeck 
 souvenirs for returning visitors, or rattling 
 pianos for staying ones, to the bourne where 
 
 ‘naught of man endures before the sun,” 
 
A GREAT LIE 171 
 
 unless it be a switchback, that emblem of 
 futility. 
 
 Somehow the world was growing a less 
 beautiful place in his eyes—probably in order 
 to account for his Jack Horner-like preference 
 for corners in which to consume fruit of dubious 
 quality—and he found himself increasingly 
 liable to wind up sentences, that promised 
 much in poetic sentiment, with an ill-assorting 
 tag of ridicule. | 
 
 He wanted to defeat some of the poetic 
 sentiments of the world—O how badly, now 
 and then!—this about ‘being saved,” for 
 instance. ‘‘A fool’s consciousness of his own 
 vitality,” was the meaning of the process the 
 artist had said. But then, wasn’t being 
 damned just the same thing? Well, why 
 not? It only proved that death in life was 
 mere respectability. It made one cheerful 
 to know that; at least it was calculated to 
 make one cheerful. 
 
 “T am in a fix, anyhow,” decided Edmund, 
 
 as he walked up and down the promenade, 
 
172 A GREAT LIE 
 
 affectionately glancing at the sea the while— 
 the sea that impassively committed all the 
 crimes and displayed all the graces—‘‘I am 
 in a fix; because I am a creature of habit. 
 My bump of veneration is too large, or too 
 small, I must respect myself. How do my 
 
 namesake’s lines go ?— 
 
 ‘If Iam shameless as a venomed weed, 
 Yet crave the sunlight and inhale the air, 
 And if, while here I am, the lily’s there, 
 Who dare oppose my claim—although my seed 
 Be hidden yet, unwaking, unaware ? 
 The eternal evil fixed and combative, 
 The good that hates it and is touched with fire, 
 Are seen by God to make the clod, the mire, 
 Subtle to breed the force whereby they live, 
 And win His smile by doubling His desire. 
 All sins of pride that in their darkness bleed, 
 All limping virtues, that cry Jchadbod / 
 Love, in the lily, or the shameless weed, 
 God That is good and Evil that is God.’” 
 
 The thoughts tossing about in his mind un- 
 fitted him for the promenade, and he walked 
 madly into the thicket of ill-set streets where 
 
 the tumbledown houses looked saucily through 
 
A GREAT LIE 173 
 
 bleared eyes at their neighbours across the 
 way. 
 
 “Don't tell me,” muttered Edmund, ‘that 
 saving goes on here. Damme, there’s the 
 house! What shall come out of it?” 
 
 He had the courage to stand still as though 
 it might speak to him. The _ evangelist 
 answered his question by emerging from 
 it. 
 
 ‘“‘Good-day,” said Edmund. 
 
 “You have come, then,’ remarked Mr 
 Lyminge, and Edmund saw a lowering still- 
 ness of angry mental night on the face 
 levelled at his. In view of an impending 
 torrent of words he felt half-afraid, though a 
 naked Hercules might have found no fear 
 in him. 
 
 “You have something to say,” he said. 
 ‘‘Ts this the place?” 
 
 ‘If you can clear yourself, why not?” 
 
 “Tf I can't—?” 
 
 “Any place where you can drop upon 
 
 your knees.” 
 
174 A GREAT LIE 
 
 A gaze from an upper window was felt by 
 both. 
 
 “What are you making of that woman?” 
 
 “What have you made?” 
 
 But Edmund had seen her face, and not 
 the inquisition of the crowd, or the intuition 
 of the evangelist, could stay the blood in 
 his veins that ran for victory of the animal 
 in him as though his soul were afloat upon — 
 it. All the precedent hated humbug of his 
 compact eternity of life, lived and regretted, 
 lent poignancy to the despair which squeezed 
 the answer out of his lips. 
 
 “Damn you!” he muttered; ‘you have 
 made her a prying saint!” 
 
 She imaged to him in burlesque the 
 figure he had presented to heaven and earth 
 when he assumed the attitude of prayer, 
 while he had nothing worthy to pray for, 
 when, in fact, he did not dare to whisper, 
 “lead us not into temptation,” for fear he 
 should be withdrawn from the delights of a 
 
 conscious fall. He turned hot and cold with 
 
A GREAT LIE 175 
 
 remembrance of the mere sensuous gratifi- 
 cation he had sought and obtained in religious 
 revival, for it seemed to him that the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost could be nothing 
 else than this. 
 
 “Yes, I said ‘damn you,” he repeated, 
 the more defiantly because he felt unstrung, 
 and the loafers of the street applauded him. 
 
 “You condemn yourself,” said the evan- 
 gelist. 
 
 “Then I have saved you some trouble,” 
 remarked Edmund. 
 
 “We are at cross purposes,” said the 
 evangelist. “It may be worth while to talk 
 reasonably, quietly.” 
 
 ‘Where then?” asked Edmund. 
 
 ‘““My house,” said the evangelist. 
 
 And so it was at the formers house 
 that the man of God and the chameleon- 
 
 man agreed to hold conference. 
 Edmund wondered faintly why he walked 
 by this man’s side. Why did he not run 
 
 away into the broader world? The answer 
 
176 A GREAT LIE 
 
 was simple enough. His interests were here 
 
 centred: he was too lazy to go and seek fresh 
 
 ones. To amaze the people that had known 
 the old Edmund with the glories and whim- 
 sies of the new Edmund, to set his present 
 stature against that of men and youths who 
 had overborne him, to delight women’s eyes 
 that had never glanced his way save in re- 
 luctant compassion, to confuse minds that had — 
 set his in the midst of a darkness of dogma 
 —this was what he had thought to do, this 
 was what he was doing. And the imagina- 
 tion that creates beings, which, having cog- 
 nizance of only two dimensions, restrict their 
 movements accordingly, finds Edmund faithful 
 to a mental law in a stubborn adherence to 
 his old environment or envelope. 
 
 The door of the evangelist’s house was 
 not shut, as though to connect the interior 
 with the fragrance of a garden-plot enamelled 
 with Virginia stocks. They did not go into 
 the parlour with its glistening over-mantel of 
 
 machine-made symmetry, its gorgeous photo- 
 
A GREAT LIE LRT 
 
 graph-frames, its hard and airless landscapes 
 and its subsidiary wall-growth of rosettes and 
 furbelows and chair-growth of antimacassars 
 and shawls; but they went upstairs to a little 
 room that was the evangelist’s study, where 
 were a few good books set in a cool ex- 
 panse of shelves, a writing-table and two 
 chairs. 
 
 The evangelist shut the door, and the two 
 were alone. 
 
 “In the first place,” said the evangelist, 
 “permit me to tell you what I saw and 
 heard when I was summoned from the band- 
 meeting last Tuesday evening. The girl 
 Alice, who lodges over the brush shop, had 
 felt ill, and sent down word by the servant 
 Kate to the landlady. The landlady retorted, 
 ‘I thought it would come to this,’ but she 
 went upstairs notwithstanding. Alice said she 
 had such a pain in her side that she was 
 afraid she was dying. The landlady said, ‘I 
 would have told you so when I saw that 
 ghost. ‘What ghost?’ asked Alice. And 
 
 M 
 
178 A GREAT LIE 
 
 then it appeared that the Mr Edmund who 
 went down in the Hardcastle—went down 
 certainly and irrevocably as a sightless stone 
 —was a frequent visitor of this house. And 
 you, sir, are as like that dead man, as two 
 eyes in the same head, Alice had known 
 the dead man (the dreary story does not 
 bear telling); but he had drifted away—lI 
 suppose when he became a lover before the 
 world of one better than she. Such was the 
 revelation made to me, coupled with the bare- 
 faced falsehood—founded on the ugly super- 
 stition, which is all of religion a corrupted 
 spirit has the power to bestow—that you, 
 sir, are the ghost of your wicked predecessor 
 in good looks, and that you were on Monday 
 night the Devil’s ambassador summoning her 
 to Hell. Poor woman, she fed the horror 
 thus laid upon her till her cries for the 
 Father’s mercy effected an entrance even into 
 that house, for me His servant. And now 
 
 sir, she is saved; and your hypocrisies are 
 over. Thank God, thank God!” 
 
A GREAT LIE 179 
 
 “T would leave you to thank Him,” said 
 Edmund, rising; “but I wish to ask this: 
 Did you tell her anything ?” 
 
 “JT vouched for your flesh and blood. I 
 could say nothing more.” 
 
 ‘Flow did she take it?” 
 
 “She was unconvinced. Indeed,” pro- 
 ceeded the evangelist with mild severity, ‘you 
 did your best to confuse her. But,” he con- 
 tinued with some hesitation, ‘‘there was 
 another reason for her retaining the idea that 
 you were a spirit. For, man, your prede- 
 cessor seems, after his sort, to have loved | 
 her. At any rate, when he decided to marry 
 that heiress, whom God has spared from find- 
 ing him out, his paramount wish was to pro- 
 vide for this woman. At least, it was a wish 
 only second to his wish to provide for him- 
 self, He gave her, just before your arrival 
 at this town, enough money to lay the founda- 
 tion of an honest livelihood, had she been 
 disposed to spend it prudently. On the whole, 
 I sympathise with her for wasting it. She 
 
180 A GREAT LIE 
 
 could not have wanted that kind of remem- 
 brance of him. And she had his own vain 
 words spoken at parting, which are some- 
 thing more than vain to her now. He said 
 that when he was dead his ‘convenient 
 marriage’ would be void; that he would for- 
 get everything but his love for her; his fear 
 that she should suffer harm. ‘I will come 
 back at the last,’ he said. That was a sort 
 of peroration to a former speech about never 
 deserting her. It ill becomes one to judge 
 the dead, but I should be inclined to call that 
 man, living and dead, a great lie.” 
 
 “T think,’ said Edmund in a low tone, 
 “that he kept his word with uncommon in- 
 genuity. But I must not detain you. I, at 
 any rate, am a great lie, and have my work 
 to do. Good-day.” 
 
 “Stop!” cried the evangelist imperiously. 
 ‘Is there no lesson for you, think you, in all 
 this? I do not believe that you are other 
 than flesh and blood, but can you say that 
 
 you are truly alive? Answer the question 
 
A GREAT LIE 181 
 
 between yourself and your Maker: Do you 
 live? Does it need my tongue to tell you 
 that the beauty and the wisdom that have 
 disgraced themselves, under the spur of what- 
 ever passion, are a mask upon corruption? 
 Tear it aside yourself and hate yourself; if 
 the world should withdraw it, you would but 
 cherish the plague-spot it would reveal.” 
 
 “I do not propose to commit suicide,” said 
 Edmund. 
 
 “We have different conceptions about tak- 
 ing life,’ said the evangelist. 
 
 “Oh, indeed!” 
 
 “Yes. It would take my life to grow 
 dumb under the strain of incessant lying, and 
 deaf by continual suppression of the still 
 small voice, and. blind by excluding God and 
 man from the notice of my eyes. Is that 
 enough? Ah! I should starve if I put aside 
 the gift of Jesus Christ which is eternal life, 
 and stood alone.” 
 
 ‘There are others.” 
 
 “The supreme art of self is to stand above 
 
182 A GREAT LIE 
 
 others at an immeasurable height, and forget 
 the humanity owed to them, in order to 
 accept with serenity their extremest service. 
 And, therefore, the selfish man is alone, and 
 he dies as much of his mental gluttony 
 for praise as of his physical gluttony for 
 flesh, He who lives in the common life 
 may live; but he who lives by the common 
 life shall die.” 
 
 “There are plenty of men like me even 
 on that reckoning,’ said Edmund. 
 
 “Doubtless. The gigantic self is pre- 
 valent, but each monster of the kind sees 
 all other men as pigmies. But not for such 
 subtleties did I bring you here, but to plead 
 with you. God is patient under folly and 
 insincerity ; but do not sin against the Holy 
 Ghost. You know the truth; receive it. 
 Start afresh. I have whispered no word 
 of this, your sin, to the world—why should 
 I? Disclose yourself to yourself, and put on 
 the beauty of Christ by accepting the sacri- 
 fice of His Blood.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 183 
 
 “s¥ou) are kind,” said, Edmund | feebly, 
 “You are kind; but you are too good to 
 understand.” 
 
 “I do understand,” said the evangelist 
 passionately. ‘I have been through it all, 
 and emerged. Why? Because I found that 
 there was no self-satisfaction but ‘to be 
 nothing, nothing’ in one’s self, and all to 
 men, by a continual flowing out of self in 
 the stream of brotherly love, which girdles 
 the universe. In that nothingness there is 
 life eternal; not as a reward, but as a result. 
 But, ere I knew that nothingness, I debased 
 myself at the bidding of a hungry nerve, 
 even as you have, sir. Where the nerve 
 led me, there I followed; in my self-broken- 
 ness, in my imbecility of hunger, I was 
 bound for the nothingness which is death. 
 But now the healing hand of Jesus has 
 touched me, and I am free of wandering 
 desires. I am free by Him —by Him 
 alone.” 
 
 “T must be going,” said Edmund. 
 
184 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “One moment,” said the evangelist; “ will 
 you try to give yourself to Him?” 
 
 Edmund gazed at him solemnly. The 
 white face, with the large eager eyes of 
 grey, that met his subtle green ones steadily 
 (with wonder), yet tenderly (with pity), was 
 still a young face, but a face as radiant as 
 the winter-face of a poet in whom is the 
 soul of a nation. ‘“ He is a man,” thought 
 Edmund, “who has gained all he asked— 
 the victory of himself.” Down in the garden 
 was the sound of a child’s feet; against the 
 outer wall was the patter of a ball. “He 
 has a _ child,” thought Edmund, ‘‘a_ child 
 whom he can look at with joy, because he 
 has given it nothing evil for an inheritance. 
 And I—I dare not picture myself a father; 
 and I dare not picture myself a lonely man. 
 How this man’s life affronts me!” His eye 
 roved the wall, and there, in an odd scroll- 
 work of assorted types, he saw the Lord’s 
 Prayer, headed with a picture of the Christ. 
 ‘“The man has a gigantic simplicity,” thought 
 
A GREAT LIE 185 
 
 Edmund; ‘he is a child at heart. How 
 confidently he looks at me while I rear my- 
 self out of my bottomless pit to stand on his 
 study-floor! In front is his little show-garden ; 
 behind are his vegetables. He has a parlour 
 full of the showy rubbish that pleases the 
 elect. Here he has me, and he wants me; 
 ah! how badly he wants me! There is no- 
 thing worth seeing in the back, front, or 
 parlour, without me! He does not under- 
 stand or accept the incompleteness of life. 
 He is not for saying, ‘God That is good, and 
 evil that is God,’ like my quaint predecessor. 
 He believes in the great war between the 
 Omnipotent Creator and His creatures. And 
 the casus bed? That there may be fun in 
 heaven, one must suppose. But does he? 
 Not a bit of it. He prates of free-will, Am 
 I willing to be condemned? No! certainly 
 not. How he stares at me! Will I capitu- 
 late when I see the executioner? Of course 
 I will; but I must have some information 
 
 about the law of the land.” 
 
186 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Well, brother?” said the evangelist quietly.. 
 
 Edmund shivered slightly, and stumbled: 
 over words. ‘I have thought it over,” he 
 murmured. ‘You are right. I am wrong. 
 When next I go to chapel it shall be to give: 
 myself to the Lord.” 
 
 “Shall we pray together, brother?” said. 
 the evangelist gently and gladly. 
 
 “Not now,” said Edmund faintly. ‘‘ This. 
 thing is for silence” 
 
 He withdrew hurriedly, not unmoved, and 
 half ashamed. “It is not a great lie, this. 
 time,’ he reflected for such comfort as )1t 
 might bring; “it is only a little white one.” 
 
 But, underlying his amazing effrontery of 
 argument, was the disturbing thought that. 
 the evangelist’s surroundings were merely 
 accidental to him; that his absence of art- 
 sense was atoned for by a perfection of 
 soul-sense, whereby matter was not a subject 
 worthy of man’s sensitiveness. In the tremen- 
 dous question of man’s relationship to his. 
 
 Maker, the minor question of the harmonious. 
 
A GREAT LIE 187 
 
 distribution of wool, and crochet, and paint, 
 was not, and never would be, suggested. Let 
 it be granted that he would always be a 
 child in this world, and his pleasure in mere 
 vivid colouring would remain as the savages’. 
 Still, his power of self-sacrifice would defeat 
 his critics to the end. Where their cowardice 
 retreated, he set his lips and advanced. 
 He, before whose eyes the smoke of Hell 
 dispersed as a mountain mist before the 
 morning, had the power of beauty if not the 
 sense of art. ‘Then,’ quoth Edmund inter- 
 nally, to uplift and confirm the white lie 
 once and for all, “what is the use of speech 
 if it is not to allay anger, and lull suspicion, 
 and maintain peace? Truth is the one un- 
 pardonable impertinence in a world of im- 
 perfection.” 
 
 After his abrupt departure, and as the 
 clock struck five, the evangelist’s daughter 
 reminded him that tea was ready. 
 
 But the evangelist was praying for Edmund. 
 
 He did not come down tto his tea for 
 
188 A GREAT LIE 
 
 another half-hour; and then his incensed wife 
 scolded him to his weary, shining face. 
 
 When Edmund reached his home, he found 
 Mrs Gotch in cheerful ascendancy at the tea- 
 table; Miss Grainger was also there. He 
 saluted them both scrupulously. 
 
 Mrs Weaverling was full of a reporter, who 
 had called on her and announced his sym- 
 pathy in very impressive tones. He _ had 
 not seen her husband, but his Muse had 
 held converse with the fisherman, as the next 
 number of the Scout duly testified : 
 
 ‘“‘? Twas for the best, brave mariner, 
 He was a crippled lad ;” 
 
 Quoth Weaverling, ‘‘ Bethink ye, sir, 
 My best was all I had.” 
 
 During the meal, Edmund could not but 
 observe a something peculiarly polite in Mrs 
 Gotch’s bearing towards him, which indicated 
 in that pious and malignant person a sense 
 of holding a trump-card, and brooding over 
 it. If he handed her the water-cress, she 
 
 thanked him in a severe way; if he did not 
 
A GREAT LIE 189 
 
 address her personally, she seemed to wait 
 patiently for the removal of an intrusive 
 obstacle, or else, to compose her broad face 
 into an expression of absolute indifference. 
 
 fe have: just seen Mr Lyminge,’ he re- 
 marked easily. 
 
 Both his mother and Miss Guinot: looked 
 relieved. 
 
 ‘But,’ remarked Mrs Gotch, “poor Mr 
 Lyminge has to see everybody.” 
 
 “That comes well from one who makes it 
 her business to see ghosts,” said Edmund. 
 
 ‘“T believe what I’m told, unless I hear to 
 the contrary,” retorted Mrs Gotch, with a signi- 
 ficant glance at his face. ‘It ain’t ’ard to be- 
 lieve in ghosts after seein’ that poor Mr Ryan.” 
 
 “You have not, I hope, been the recipient 
 of any further convictions?” asked Edmund. 
 
 “T am always open—” began Mrs Gotch. 
 
 “Tike that useful vehicle the omnibus,” 
 said Edmund, ‘and some of your ideas 
 alight because it isn’t a penny all the way, 
 
 and some are joggled to death.” 
 
190 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “T could shut you up double-quick if I 
 liked,” said Mrs Gotch. “if it “wasnt vten 
 these ladies.” 
 
 “And still be open to receive?—O Mrs 
 Gotch! The sweet son mus’n't hear of this!” 
 
 Miss Grainger buttoned her gloves. 
 
 Exasperated beyond endurance, Mrs Gotch 
 exclaimed: “He ain't fit to \\speak @toe 
 thene|i: 
 
 Miss Grainger glanced at Edmund. “Shall 
 we walk a little?” she inquired. 
 
 In the depths of himself he almost loved 
 her at that moment. 
 
 “The suspect is at your service,’ he said. 
 
 Mrs Gotch cast the girl’s father in her 
 teeth. ‘I dunno wot ’e’d say,” she remarked 
 to Mrs Weaverling, “’im that was like to 
 disown her for wantin’ to go to the the- 
 ayter.”’ 
 
 As for Miss Grainger, she had not heard 
 the awful disclosures which Mrs Gotch was 
 pouring into Mrs Weaverling’s reluctant ear. 
 
 b 
 She began, therefore, on insisting on her 
 
A GREAT LIE Igt 
 
 personal dislike for Mrs Gotch. It seemed 
 to her a favourable opportunity for cultivat- 
 ing love’s shy flower in his sense of her 
 loyalty. It was not hard to believe him 
 honourable, for his beauty scorned detrac- 
 tion. 
 
 Edmund seemed greatly diverted. “You 
 must excuse her, Miss Grainger,’ he said. 
 ‘She is cast in the divine image of Mrs 
 
 Grundy; and did you mark how she, being 
 
 ‘Wroth to see [Her] kingdom fail, 
 Swings the scaly horror of her folded tail’?” 
 
 ‘“Flow you do run on, to be sure!” she ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 And under the numbing influence of his 
 little white lie in the evangelist’s study, 
 Edmund strolled on with her, regardless of 
 his power as a suspect, let alone a convict, 
 to compromise her in the eyes of the chapel- 
 folk. 
 
 “J was afraid you was angry with me,” 
 
 she said. 
 
192 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “ Angry!” he exclaimed blankly. ‘Why on 
 earth P——”’ 
 
 “T thought you might be: that’s all.” 
 
 “But why?” 
 
 “Because I laughed so much last time. 
 But, really, I couldn't help it.” 
 
 “Pooh, pooh!” said Edmund—‘“a baby’s 
 rattle !” 
 
 “Now you're rude.” 
 
 “Then there was a joke, eh? I’m sorry 
 I missed it.” 
 
 He found it simply wonderful; how utterly 
 remote she was from him as a feminine 
 personality. He himself, emptied of noble 
 sentiment and cynical under the lash of 
 Nemesis, was guilty of reflecting that he 
 might receive from innumerable women. all 
 that she had to give. 
 
 Not entirely unconscious of her own mag- 
 nanimity, the girl tried to interest him by 
 confidently admitting her own exclusiveness. 
 She did not make friends with everyone; 
 
 she could not talk with backbiters or liars. 
 
A GREAT LIE 193 
 
 “O dear, O dear!” sighed Edmund. 
 
 ‘Those three Miss Tomlinsons I can’t 
 stand,” she said. ‘Giggling in chapel! I 
 don't think they ought to come. Come or 
 ieateecome, 1) say; but, behave if you 
 do.” | 
 
 ‘IT shall never come again,” he said. 
 
 fare you |) going so soon?’ she cried, 
 almost in terror. 
 
 ““T have given up chapels,” he said. 
 
 “Oh, now, I hope you aren't thinking of 
 
 that nasty Mr Brewster,” she said. ‘‘ He's 
 silly, I think. Father says he drinks.” 
 
 PINOy? he: ) said. "here ;are wideeper 
 reasons.” 
 
 “But why? You are a Christian, are you 
 not?” 
 
 “T am ‘all things to all men,’ as St Paul 
 says,” he replied. 
 
 They walked seaward in silence for a time. 
 Then the girl drew her court around her, 
 as it were, and tried to raise her value in 
 
 his eyes, by allusion to the ardour of her 
 N 
 
194 A GREAT LIE 
 
 undeniable admirers; some of them true and 
 worthy. 
 
 ‘“T apologise to all these pleasant gentlemen 
 for escorting you,’ said Edmund. 
 
 “T could not wish for a more affable com- 
 panion,” she replied. 
 
 ‘“Affable!” His gorge rose against the 
 word; it made him feel greasy and Grandi- 
 sonian, though he had certainly never known 
 Richardson’s gentleman a week ago. 
 
 “Your wishes shall be surpassed by their 
 fulfilment,” he said. 
 
 And now she tripped in front of him to 
 the clayey bank before the rock-strewn beach, 
 and would go no further. 
 
 “T made terms with the sea long ago,” 
 he said. 
 
 Then he gazed outward, and his heart 
 stood still, and leapt. 
 
 There at the sea’s verge, pulling at the 
 sharp rocks with nervous hands, was Mrs 
 Weaverling. 
 
 “Mother!” he cried. 
 
A GREAT LIE 195 
 
 She turned round with wild eyes: ‘“ Eddy, 
 Eddy !” 
 
 He ran breathless to her side. 
 
 “T meant ‘Mrs Weaverling,’” he exclaimed, 
 and the words burned his throat. ‘“O Mrs 
 Weaverling, can you not see it is no use?” 
 
 “Oh, you are crool!” she cried. ‘Why 
 did you speak like him? Where do you 
 come from?” 
 
 ‘““Come home,” he said, ‘‘I cannot give you 
 back your son.” 
 
 He held her arm. 
 
 “Don’t touch me,” she cried. 
 
 He let her return alone, but he did not re- 
 join the dryshod girl whose sense of propriety 
 held her aloft. Formidable enough was that 
 as a barrier between them—more formidable 
 than the visible barrier of rocks ; but the agony 
 of the Great Lie straining and parting in his 
 breast was the incommunicable voice shouting 
 No! in her ears. Though she could not hear 
 it, she could feel it. 
 
 Out of the craving to be absorbed by him, 
 
196 A GREAT LIE 
 
 as we are absorbed by the impending sky 
 whose glance creates whatever of loveliness 
 we possess, a reality was born to her. It 
 was her woman’s soul. 
 
 And he? 
 
 The grey reality of pain, the boding of 
 evil to come in his mother’s face, the self- 
 sacrifice of hurried days and wakeful nights 
 sharpening those strong features still dear to 
 him—in the presence of these the Great Liar 
 went through all the contortions of self-dis- 
 covery and self-disgrace. He was Brewster 
 on the mental plane. 
 
 On that ominous night unconsecrated by 
 prayer, he dreamed the most frightful dream 
 of his life. He dreamed that it was impossible 
 to be alone, to be still and be at ease. There, 
 as he lay facing the door, the blank darkness 
 became hostile and a voice cried: “I last. | 
 last, who do not blame you, but have made 
 you my eternal mark because you are utterly 
 alone. I last, who see you as you will be in 
 
 the wilderness of shadows, in the teeth of the 
 
A GREAT LIE 197 
 
 wordless wind in the hollow that has no earth 
 beneath or sky above.” 
 
 This voice was near enough to terrify him ; 
 far enough away to be strange as death is. 
 It was loud enough to intensify the choking 
 silence that hung about him; it was low 
 enough to seem more stealthy than the creak- 
 ing footstep of a robber upon the stair. Fear 
 maddened him, and he lurched on his bed 
 that he might hear the jangling of its iron 
 frame, and then it was as if the bed had be- 
 come a wild beast that tore about the room. 
 
 Water running from a tap turned by his 
 mother broke the spell; but, ah! he had 
 learned that he was afraid to be by himself. 
 He cowered in the open hell of liars, able 
 only to do evil, the music of forfeited desire 
 fading into inarticulate nonsense as it played 
 
 itself out in his brain. 
 
Ole Weed Bod Ree 
 
 WueENn he awoke, with the stertorous breath- 
 ing of his father startling his ears, and the 
 sense that his reputation was transfixed by 
 the tongue of Mrs Gotch oppressing his mind, 
 he was in no mood to encounter the blistering — 
 sultry day that the early mists presaged. 
 
 He found the artist in a tranquil state of 
 clairvoyance, humanised by a slight heavi- 
 ness, not to be called headache. 
 
 “T can see better than I can paint to-day,” 
 he remarked cheerfully. 
 
 “What is the use of that?” inquired 
 Edmund. 
 
 “Use be damned! There is clearly more 
 enjoyment. Yet there is a use, too.” 
 
 “Name it,” said Edmund dully. 
 
 “The better I see the more I know how 
 to leave out.” 
 
 Edmund withdrew his eyes from the 
 198 
 
A-GREAT LIE 199 
 
 artist: to him the room was swimming; the 
 little white lie of yesterday was making him 
 feel giddy. 
 
 “What is the matter with you?” inquired 
 the artist. 
 
 “QO Christ! it is one of the things you 
 have left out!” 
 
 Perhaps the obtrusion of the Methodistical 
 Edmund-the-Ugly on the Parnassian Edmund- 
 the-Beautiful quickened the artist; or perhaps 
 the anguish of his model’s voice struck a 
 vibrant chord of his heart: be that as it 
 may, his hortatory words seemed to Edmund 
 horridly noisy as thunder, fearfully vivid as 
 lightning. 
 
 «Sir, —there was a crash to the weary 
 listener—‘‘ when I see a man perfectly from 
 head to heel”—there was a flash—‘‘and all 
 the show of him is beautiful, I pay him the 
 homage of imitation; I try to reproduce that 
 beauty. I am glad—I am proud. But when 
 I see that the man is not glad, that he is, 
 
 on the contrary, miserable, that he is not 
 
200 A GREAT LIE 
 
 proud, but, on the contrary, ashamed, then 
 I know that the mind of the man disowns— 
 not to say repudiates—that beauty, by hostility 
 to its peace in the perturbation of private 
 guilt, in the pondering of unjust relation to 
 it which makes that mind as one who has 
 forced the Gate of Paradise, whose garment 
 is stolen—stolen, sir!\”—crash followed flash 
 and Edmund shut his eyes, and would fain 
 have stopped his ears, but the terrible voice 
 boomed on into them unhindered— ‘“ And 
 there I halt, sir. It is not my artist’s wish 
 to reproduce that poisoned and _ poisonous 
 mind behind the beauty, whose aspect I enjoy 
 in common with the most superficial observer 
 in the street. Poor Beauty is_ insulted 
 enough in this our world. But I owe you 
 as a man (and a model!) so much of advice. 
 If you are not on good terms with your 
 beauty, if, to resume my somewhat odd 
 simile, you have, in fact, stolen it”—again 
 the flash—‘“there is a majority that will 
 
 not disapprove of a theft so noble if you lend 
 
A GREAT LIE 201 
 
 colour to it yourself. Frankly, I expect some 
 joyous swagger on your part, if thief you be. 
 I expect you to live up to the old ideal that 
 made you so nimble! I resent seeing you 
 turn grey.” 
 
 When he had finished, Edmund, coldly 
 conscious of returning power, snapped out 
 the first retaliatory speech that occurred to 
 him. ‘It is you who're the thief!” 
 
 “For unlocking your cupboard, you would 
 say? But patience, on amz, 1 restore you the 
 key.” 
 
 “ Blackguard!” murmured Edmund. 
 
 “Sh!” said the artist, finger on lip, ‘‘ how 
 can I paint?” 
 
 Edmund smiled in spite of himself. 
 
 When tthe sitting terminated, the artist, as 
 was usual with him, courteously walked to 
 the folding doors, and opened the one at 
 his left hand. 
 
 He stood still, holding the handle with his 
 disengaged hand, while he proffered his right 
 to Edmund. 
 
202 A GREAT LIE 
 
 As the two faced one another, the lethargic 
 misery, which eclipsed the youthful freshness 
 of his model, inspired him with pity. Un- 
 fortunately it turned somewhat acid in the 
 process of translation. 
 
 ‘Here’s vulgar advice to you,” he began 
 abruptly. ‘In plain, unpoetical words, duck 
 up! Youll not be damned for making the 
 most of what you've got. Make the most 
 of it, then! You've a voice which any 
 impressario would speculate in, for you have 
 the making of an all-conquering tenor. You 
 might become a Croesus in eighteen months ; 
 and economy would then be more mad than 
 farcical. But that is the poor part of the 
 entertainment, festive as it sounds. ‘ Sweets 
 to the sweet.’ You will find that the world 
 was never so full of fair ladies. And all 
 willing to be yours! They will not think 
 of your mind, I promise you. You are no 
 ascetic, but you want to avoid the appearance 
 of gaining greatly by undeserved advantages. 
 
 My friend, there is the tale of a man now 
 
A GREAT LIE 203 
 
 turned into stone because he ate mutton-suet 
 from the hands of the elves—a man, remember, 
 who rose above the temptations that princely 
 Satan provides. The low pig! it was well 
 he became a stone pig, though a less enduring 
 statue to his memory were to be preferred! 
 Don't follow his example. Let your sin be 
 splendid, not sordid. As green-bay tree, the 
 wicked man is prosperous and delightful ; 
 as mere thistle, he is the mark of every 
 bumpkin’s stick. In other words, in the 
 world we live in, the man of taste has infinite 
 credit, the man of undiscriminating impulse, 
 none. Not without praise is he who 
 succumbs to the dazzling bribe ; despicable is 
 he who is caught playing ‘beggar my neigh- 
 bour’ with the humble and meek. That is 
 why one man is ‘profligate,’ and another is 
 ‘obscene. You have a pretty talent; don't 
 squander it on prostitutes and parsons. The 
 humiliation produced by consorting with the 
 one, leads quite fatally to absolute obfusca- 
 
 tion, at the instance of the other.” 
 
204 , A GREAT LIE 
 
 The artist rolled all this out in a leisurely 
 way, between a shrug and a sneer. He 
 misread the calmness of his listener. 
 
 “Have you quite finished?” asked the 
 latter with inhuman politeness. 
 
 “JT think so. Yes, you have my philosophy 
 in a nutshell.” 
 
 “Then you shall have mine in a similar 
 form,” said Edmund, and he hit out sideways 
 with his right hand with all the force he 
 could muster. 
 
 The artist avoided the blow with scarcely 
 an effort, and its weight fell on the edge of 
 the door, causing Edmund a moment of 
 exquisite pain. 
 
 “On the whole, my philosophy wins,” said 
 the artist, but Edmund left him without an- 
 other word, and with a firm intention not to 
 speak to him again, even to receive the 
 modicum of salary which fell due. 
 
 His head was aching, and his hat was an 
 unendurable weight till, on taking It Ott 
 seemed as if all the flagrant sunlight lay 
 
A GREAT LIE 205 
 
 upon him. Added to that was the unfortunate 
 wrist, bruised to the bone, which reminded 
 him of his pugilistic failure. Why, he asked 
 himself, had he struck the blow? Himself 
 replied that it was less’ because he was 
 insulted and enraged than because he desired 
 to prove his own reality, z.e. solidity in the 
 flesh. The consequence had been merely to 
 set the stamp of human frailty upon the 
 limb. that might have passed for godlike. 
 Then, it seemed to him that there had 
 been a _ suspension of brain-life in him 
 during the space of two hours. He had lost 
 the logic of lying, and adopted a kind of 
 piteous honesty which the Recording Angel 
 might be conceived to ponder a moment over, 
 pen in hand, ere writing it down as half-a- 
 lie. He had certainly arrived at this conclu- 
 sion that, so long as he did things with any 
 consciousness of their future effect upon him 
 he was untruthful in a subtle way. He could 
 not resist the thought that he might pause, 
 
 here or there, in the grand marauding expedi- 
 
200 A GREAT LIE 
 
 tion of life, merely that he might say to 
 himself, ‘I drew the line at one thing; I 
 couldn’t stand that, at anyrate.” 
 
 He was roused from this introspection by 
 hearing the voices of the inseparable Gotch- 
 one and Hallaway, who had just come out of 
 school. 
 
 “Mar,” said Gotch-one, alluding imper- 
 fectly to his domestic goddess of war, ‘‘says 
 she'll ’av him took up if he touches us.” 
 
 “Keep it dark,” said Hallaway, “but I 
 know a thing or two.” His subsequent re- 
 marks showed that he had peered into 
 Edmund's dust-bin of hard fact with no little 
 sagacity. 
 
 Neither of the pair mentioned his name. 
 By an ingenious curvature, Edmund put him- 
 self abreast of them. 
 
 “Well met, boys!” 
 
 They said nothing. 
 
 “JT am pleased to see you together,” said 
 Edmund. ‘You were born to extinguish 
 
 one another: that’s the only excuse for there 
 
A GREAT LIE 207 
 
 being two of you. Nature is perverse, but 
 she repents.” 
 
 His hand lay heavily on Hallaway’s shoulder. 
 
 “Talking scandal, eh, Hallaway?” 
 
 “No, we ain't,’ said that youth, with a 
 perceptible snarl. 
 
 “Do you believe him, Gotch?” 
 
 ‘Of course I do.” 
 
 “Does Hallaway believe Hallaway?” 
 
 “Ves, he does, Clever, so there!” sneered 
 Hallaway. 
 
 “Confiding boy—this is indeed faith!” 
 
 “Ts that all?” said Hallaway. 
 
 “Well, I had thought of giving you both 
 a thrashing, but Hallaway’s loyalty to himself 
 Saeiwenotebe in vain. But take care. The 
 boys that stoned Edmund Weaverling on the 
 day he died—O and many times before! (not 
 to speak of the Guy Fawkes’ Day baiting) 
 [an old and horrible grotesque which made 
 them redden |—are not fit to decry their neigh- 
 bours. Hold your tongues, little murderers ; 
 
 if you had been talking of Jack Ketch him- 
 
208 A GREAT LIE 
 
 self, you would have made an honest man 
 eager to chastise you. You to talk—you, 
 you! Bah, you're found out, both of you! 
 Can’t you manage a little shame?” 
 
 Hallaway turned round squarely at this: 
 “Tt’s all tommy-rot,” he said, “and you've 
 no right to call me a murderer, nor Gotch 
 Deitacr. | 
 
 It was only now that Edmund realised that 
 he was making a fool of himself, for the 
 benefit of a baker's boy and two _ habitual 
 surveyors of mankind from the chalked curb- 
 stone of the Jolly Sazlor. 
 
 Why should he put these imps through 
 their paces? He was paying too dearly for 
 matter to soothe his wounded pride. The 
 prophet stood no better with posterity for 
 being vindicated by bears when the ribalds 
 cried: ‘‘Go up, thou bald head.” And he, 
 Edmund, was no prophet, merely a_ sinner 
 rashly vindicative, and thereby a wanton par- 
 tisan of the memory which he loathed. Why, 
 he hugged the past! The idea struck him 
 
A GREAT LIE 2009 
 
 like a flash of lightning: then vanished. It 
 was still, in his estimation, necessary to have 
 the best of these boys. So he found a cata- 
 pult on Hallaway, and threw it on the roof 
 of a house, and a bird, not quite dead, in 
 Gotch’s pocket, whose neck he wrung. With 
 their hatred quivering impotently in his wake, 
 he strode away. 
 
 He wanted something to cheer him up, 
 and he was agreeably reminded by this want 
 that his clothes were now ready at the tailor’s. 
 He called for them and with all speed went 
 home to emancipate himself. 
 
 For that, indeed, was his thought as, after 
 momentary conference with the departing 
 doctor, he sat in his little bedroom—his cabin 
 at home—and drew off the old and put on 
 the new. He seemed insulated against the 
 atmosphere of rumour and disrepute that he 
 might flash forth authentic messages from the 
 current of his self-esteem. Like Teufels- 
 dréckh unto the Four-and-Twenty Tailors, he 
 
 asked of, or exclaimed to, his Sartor: “How 
 O 
 
210 A GREAT LIE 
 
 many other unholies has your covering art 
 made holy!” Being holy after the fashion 
 of Sartor, he had done with parochial life 
 and the pleasures, taken gingerly, which make 
 a hubbub of its centre. He would sojourn in 
 the heart of the world—-some great city— 
 where the word prejudice spells damnation for 
 the person holding it. Nay, he would travel 
 and abandon the thought of centrality which 
 is the cant of the free. Why had he not 
 thought of all this before? Well, the idea 
 had come to him in little more than a week 
 of his new manhood: he had not lost much 
 time. 
 
 The doctor had just told him that all danger 
 was over, so he tapped cheerily at his father’s 
 door, and entered. 
 
 “Well, how are you, Mr Weaverling?” he 
 said, meaning: “I know you are better, and 
 am glad of it.” 
 
 ~“Hunce, here’s transmogrifying!” was the 
 gruff comment. ‘Does all this come of 
 
 settin’ ? 
 
A-GREAT LIE 211 
 
 ““«The god Apple’ had no use for them 
 so he gave them to me,” said Edmund. 
 
 Inwardly, the fisherman raged. ‘‘ Hunc,” he 
 muttered, “I guess I can weather it now, 
 first as last.” 
 
 In his angry disgust he jumped out of bed, 
 but sank back in it giddily. 
 
 “Christ!” exclaimed Edmund. ‘You are 
 not going to get up?” 
 
 “Young man,” said the fisherman impres- 
 sively, “when I heard my boy Teddy. use that 
 sacred Name, as some young varmints had 
 got him in the habit of doin’, it seems, I told 
 im that I would thrash him within an inch 
 of his life.” 
 
 “JT am willing to be thrashed at the same 
 respectful distance.” 
 
 ‘“You are God’s mark,” quoth the fisherman. 
 
 “Did your boy offend again?” asked 
 Edmund. 
 
 ‘I grieve to say he did, sir.” 
 
 “And you kept your promise?” 
 
 ‘‘Well, perhaps I made the inch a hell, 
 
212 A GREAT LIE 
 
 sir; but I was so awk’ard over it as to bruise 
 his right arm (that skinny it was, sir), and 
 it showed purple. There! I didn’t mean to 
 hurt the lad overmuch.” 
 
 A dramatic impulse caused Edmund to 
 draw up his sleeve, though he knew what he 
 would see. It was partly a critical curiosity 
 to discover if the fisherman’s mind was fine 
 enough to suspect a miracle. 
 
 “Well, I never!” cried the latter, “ but 
 if you hain’t a mark i’ the same place! What 
 a coinsighdence.” 
 
 “T came into collision with a door,” said 
 Edmund briefly. ‘As for coincidence, it is 
 a very convenient word, and, since it is not 
 in the least blasphemous, I congratulate 
 you.” 
 
 In passing through the kitchen, he saw his 
 mother with books and papers, and a slate 
 that had belonged to him in the old days, 
 
 Moved by curiosity, he sat down and watched 
 her. Well he remembered the hateful grinding 
 
 noise of the pencil on the slate, which was 
 
A GREAT LIE 213 
 
 still new-looking in spite of surreptitious 
 inkings. 
 
 “ Poor Eddy,” whimpered Mrs Weaverling, 
 “‘] hain’t ’ardly the ’eart to rub it out.” 
 
 “What is it?” he inquired. 
 
 ‘‘Bless you, I don’t know! ’E was grand 
 at figgurs, was Eddy.” 
 
 The slate exhibited an attempt to reduce 
 the sixty-seventh of one to a decimal. 
 
 “There warn’t no end to this sum, Eddy 
 mecamio say, she replied. ‘See, sir, he ‘ad 
 done both sides of the slate.” 
 
 “Tt tails out like a python, eh?” 
 
 “Them was his very words,” said the 
 woman, the startled reminiscent look returning 
 to her face. ‘“‘I remember, ’cause I didn’t 
 know what a python was.” 
 
 “Odd,” commented Edmund briefly. ‘Shall 
 I finish the sum for you?” he added. 
 
 “ No, sir; it is a token.” 
 
 “Let it be a token, then,’ he. said 
 gravely, watching her hang up the slate. 
 “When other fellows were thinking of their 
 
214 A GREAT LIE 
 
 sweethearts, he was thinking of the sixty- 
 seventh, and how to make it as long and im- 
 posing as he might. Thirty figures perhaps— 
 Lord knows. And when you look at me, 
 my good woman, and see me look so imposing, 
 you must remember the fatal dot before it 
 all. Do you understand?” 
 
 “T can’t say as I do so, sir; but you ave 
 fine to-day and no mistake.” 
 
 ‘What do you really think of me?” asked 
 Edmund. 
 
 She hardened somewhat. ‘I takes people 
 as I finds ’em.” 
 
 “Thank you,” he said. 
 
 Mrs Weaverling spread the table for him, 
 and in good spirits he began his dinner. 
 There was little doubt but that Mrs Gotch 
 was an ineffective adversary, and Sartor a 
 friend in need. 
 
 He ate with gusto while Mrs Weaverling 
 began to look through a prize copy-book of 
 Edmund's which she had locked away during 
 the preceding Christmas holidays. 
 
A GREAT LIE 2165 
 
 “ Ah, he wrote beautiful!” she said. 
 
 “Never copied his own fist, eh?” 
 
 ‘No, always the top line, sir.” She was 
 in a dreamy heaven with copper-plate maxims 
 written in the sky. 
 
 Meanwhile, Edmund ventured to put a hand 
 down to caress Dick who waited grimly upon 
 the meal. The cat scratched him instantly, 
 and withdrew, swearing with no little point. 
 
 ‘““A claw in the paw is worth two in the 
 palm,” said Edmund with a careful look at 
 his injuries. 
 
 While Mrs Weaverling rebuked the cat, 
 Edmund continued pleasantly: ‘“‘Such I be- 
 lieve is the sense of the last motto but one 
 in that copy-book—the page with the butter 
 mark.” 
 
 “Why, it’s ‘a bird in the hand is worth 
 two in the bush,’” said Mrs Weaverling. 
 
 “And did I not say ‘a claw in the paw is 
 worth two in the palm’ ?” 
 
 “Flow do you do it?” she demanded, 
 
 “Do what?” 
 
216 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “Why, see into things that never have been 
 shown you. The butter mark—how did you 
 see that? Eddy made it at tea when he was 
 showin’ us the book.” 
 
 “Ah; vanity begins at home: that, I be- 
 lieve, is the motto of page three. There’s no 
 blot on that page.” 
 
 Mrs Weaverling looked at page three, and 
 finding him right except in the word substi- 4 
 tuted for ‘‘charity,” she grew alarmed. 
 
 “Can you tell fortunes?” she asked. 
 
 ‘No, I can only make them,” he replied 
 cheerfully, and he walked out. 
 
 He smiled over the little trumpery game 
 with his mother as he walked with rapid and 
 stately steps to the promenade. Sartor had 
 given him new life; though now, as heretofore, 
 he was practically penniless, he felt enshrouded 
 and protected by the mystery of untold wealth. 
 He could have passed Old Brewster with 
 superb effrontery; he could have stared 
 through the tremendous solidity of Mrs Gotch 
 as though it were a pane of glass. By 
 
A GREAT LIE 207 
 
 Sartor’s help, he could have cold-shouldered 
 his past though it were cast into the speak- 
 ing likeness of its begetter; by Sartor’s help 
 he could have done all these things, and still 
 have preserved a measure of polite condescen- 
 sion for Sartor himself. 
 
 Yet it was scarcely Sartor’s gala day. 
 Heaven was brooding in secret over the 
 listening land and the dangerous stillness 
 of the sea. Sartor’s favourites knew _ this, 
 and Edmund, finding no gay regiments on 
 the asphalte, walked down the steps into the 
 winds of the undercliff. 
 
 There, in the shadow of trees holding 
 strenuously the slanting earth for foothold, as 
 between miniature mountain and miniature 
 abyss he walked, and flippant thoughts and 
 fancies withdrew gradually by the influence 
 of the vast rumination of Nature, and he was 
 able to think in terms of her illimitable 
 thought. He became quiet, sagacious. Sar- 
 tor had done a noble work: Sartor was 
 
 forgotten. 
 
218 A GREAT LIE 
 
 As he passed along the path, Edmund 
 discerned a solitary woman reading a_ book, 
 seated on a rustic bench overlooking the sea. 
 
 It was Virginia, whom Edmund saw now 
 for the first time. 
 
 She wore a grey dress of a fine thin 
 material without a gloss upon it. In lieu of 
 the semi-masculine starched linen breast-plates 
 of her day, the dress opened triangularly at 
 the bosom to show a soft florally-imprinted 
 vest that spoiled no curve of the woman's 
 most graceful outline. On her studiously- 
 inclined head was a straw hat whose red 
 roses, set in an orange film, looked down- 
 wards gaily to the one serious white rose 
 that told where her heart might be. Sprays 
 of her brown hair escaped from her temples, 
 and perhaps it was they that gave the crown- 
 ing touch of womanliness to the serene face 
 that was no stranger to grief. It was a face 
 that seemed now drooping as a flower wearied 
 of the sun, yet responsive to its lingering fare- 
 
 well. The colour in it was contrasted with 
 
A GREAT LIE 219 
 
 no special paleness as in the case of that 
 called peachbloom : in plain words, the beauties 
 of the face were all honest, not open and 
 joyous as the favourite milkmaid of the idyll 
 would have them, but toned down by quiet 
 endeavour in a sphere of thinking rather than 
 doing, of points of view rather than of simple 
 action—toned down also by failure, not un- 
 heroic, and a few tears. Under the delicate 
 oval of the chin was a grey bow, prettily 
 askew. That and the winning flutter of the 
 hair were the only concessions she made to 
 the zsthetic law of disorder. A white glove 
 covered the tender hand which Edmund 
 could see holding the book, and suddenly he 
 longed for its removal. That longing was a 
 sion. He was in love. 
 
 He was in love, maybe with a picture, 
 but he was in love. He could feel a lilt in 
 the motion of his being that bid fair to 
 support the whole sullen sky should it dare 
 to fall upon his fate. He could feel it despite 
 
 all tentacles of the monstrous ugly past cling- 
 
220 A GREAT LIE 
 
 ing to him. And because he felt love natur- 
 ally, inevitably, absorbingly, instantly, he was 
 playing no spy upon her as he stood, his 
 hand to the rail of the miniature abyss and 
 stole his several glances at her, which he 
 gathered into one perfect view that was to 
 stay with him while life lasted. 
 
 Yet even love cannot instil a sense of its 
 own overpowering momentousness in the dark- — 
 ness of semi-obliterated intelligence. It cannot 
 say to the man “‘irretrievable is the lost heart 
 unless she find it: go thou and say unto her 
 ‘Take it for thine, or destroy it in my sight.’” 
 Edmund, therefore, shook himself resolutely and 
 began to pass Virginia. But here the ironies 
 were trampled in the dust in which he strode. 
 
 -He heard the long-lost music in his ears— 
 “Edmund! Edmund!” 
 
 He hesitated, then came towards her. 
 
 ‘“Kdmund, why did you choose to be called 
 dead? ... but I knew you were alive... 
 I knew it. See, I wear black no longer— 
 
 I told father I would not.” 
 
A GREAT LIE 221 
 
 It is possible that she would have fallen 
 into his arms, but he held out a forbidding 
 hand. 
 
 Love the illuminator, in whose clarity of 
 vision there is nothing comparable with the 
 highest good—which, for immortals, is the 
 only aim—withdrew the power to tempt from 
 every falsehood that the occasion might 
 suggest; and if, here and now, Edmund was 
 just in the strict sense of the world’s ethic, 
 it was because he might not withstand him- 
 self. 
 
 “You are deceived,” he said in a husky 
 voice; ‘you are deceived by a resemblance. 
 I am not what you think me.” 
 
 “Why do you lie to me?” she burst forth 
 passionately. 
 
 “T am not lying,” he said. ‘‘ Before God, 
 I repeat that I am not that Edmund whom 
 you addressed.” 
 
 “Then who are you?” she cried. 
 
 ‘“‘T am the son of a fisherman, and a fisher- 
 
 man myself.” 
 
222 A GREAT LIE 
 
 “You say that,’ she exclaimed, ‘‘in that 
 voice—in those clothes? Why are you so 
 dull in your deception? ... But what does 
 all this mean? Are you tired of me, and 
 would you show it? Is there no kinder way 
 than this?” 
 
 “T am bearing the brunt of my sin,” said 
 Edmund _ submissively, while two _ others 
 strolled between them, oblivious of their 
 tumult. They gave him time to remodel 
 his words. “I am bearing the brunt of my 
 misfortune in being like a greater man, and 
 of my vanity in dressing above my Station. 
 But I am not he... I cannot be. He was 
 drowned.” 
 
 “Tam _ bewildered,” she said, and the 
 tears sprang into her sea-blue eyes, and there 
 was a sob in her voice. 
 
 Profoundly grieved as Edmund was, it was 
 with a sane sadness that neither divided nor 
 confused his mind. It was true that his 
 prototype seemed to be capable of qualifying 
 
 a man to play the livelong liar on behalf of 
 
A GREAT LIE 223 
 
 a woman whose love was a stormy wind or a 
 consuming fire. But, here and now, he 
 dared not, and could not, propose so fantastic 
 and indecent a compromise with Death as 
 this. The menad of the undercliff had 
 faded away and left the cleansing presence of 
 this other woman to restore to the leafy 
 aisles their evasive charm, their quiet hos- 
 pitality of shade. As she looked into his 
 face, it was only the old Edmund that could 
 look back at her. She flooded his brain 
 with a tenderness which drowned the lower 
 life: he could not be harder than the earth 
 under the rain. She had reached and _ in- 
 spired the ultimate speck of good in him. 
 
 It was the soul of him which flashed out 
 now, and subdued him utterly. 
 ‘‘T am very sorry,” he said gently, ‘very 
 
 sorry that I cannot help you.” 
 
 “That will do,” she said, and she walked 
 slowly up the incline that led to the pro- 
 menade. 
 
 With head uncovered, Edmund saw her go. 
 
224 A (GREATHLIE 
 
 Suddenly he noticed that she flung the 
 book she had been reading into the coppice 
 at her left. Without seeking it, he knew, 
 instinctively, that it contained the verses of 
 her lover, and, by that act of contempt and 
 rage, he was aware that he was paying for 
 a thousand lies by the rarest veracity of a 
 
 lifetime. 
 
Disp oN eG BEE SG 
 
 Ir was impossible to go home. He there- 
 fore walked straight down to the fishmarket 
 on his way to the east cliff. 
 
 Walking along the edge of the harbour, 
 he was sensible of two boys pointing at him. 
 
 “ Oo-ni!” cried Gotch-one. 
 
 ‘Bally old thief!” cried Hallaway. 
 
 Mme scene’ was ‘so like the scene that 
 began this strange masquerade, and yet it 
 was so unlike. 
 
 “You'd best be getting home, boys,” said 
 Edmund quietly: ‘there will be a storm.” 
 
 “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!” 
 cried Hallaway. 
 
 Gotch-one put his thumb to his nose, and 
 spread out his fingers. 
 
 The stolid fishmongers stared a moment, 
 225 
 P 
 
226 A GREAT LIE 
 
 but Edmund did not pause in his walk. 
 The pity of human life smote him and drove 
 him on in silence. Never had he missed 
 the pathos of the lonely sun’s farewell to 
 the languishing earth breaking into scent 
 and bloom beneath its creative eyes; never 
 had he missed that. But the pathos of ugly 
 things meant to be beautiful, of poisonous 
 things meant to be healing, this till now he 
 had ever missed. Was it because he, too, 
 had been ugly, and that there was a sermon 
 in his body? Who shall tell; but he saw 
 the arid future extending itself before these 
 boys, and he heard the hammers of the forges 
 of the world beating them out into shapes 
 of service. Ah, those hammers of the work- 
 willers, would they, in years of swinging to 
 and fro and up and down, succeed but in 
 the casual framing of some shuffling lie, re- 
 cognised and paid as such through all its 
 smirch of toil? He, the Great Lie and the 
 beautiful, asked it, and forgave the poet the 
 
 miracle of his new birth. 
 
A GREAT LIE 227 
 
 He climbed the steep stone stairs, about 
 which the fishermen’s cottages stand like 
 eyries, gravely—yet two at a time. Pre- 
 monition of the storm lay in the lack of 
 creeping, swinging, or reclining urchins. On 
 the summit of all a preliminary chill in the 
 air gave similar warning. 
 
 Soon, standing on the water pipes that 
 overflow from Bakers Gap, he saw _ the 
 sea licking the rocks spitefully. They were 
 flung down in idle profusion before it as 
 though some giant-baby had played at house- 
 building with them for an hour and wilfully 
 refused to put them away. Nervously-tremu- 
 lous as they shook beneath his tread, or scraped 
 his hands as he slipped upon them, Edmund 
 found at last the place where he decided to 
 face his ordeal. It was a shelf against a 
 large boulder. Here he must sit and think 
 that to-day was the octave of his re-incarnation. 
 
 All kinds of clumsy, ugly, discarded things 
 lay in the crannies between the rocks; bare 
 
 bones, broken bottles, battered pails, dead 
 
228 A GREAT LIE 
 
 dogs—these waited with him before the 
 sea, denying the miracle of his life. 
 
 He smiled in their company. To them 
 nothing should happen, though the sea were 
 so greedily, wantonly, slimily full to-night. He 
 guessed how they gurgled as they climbed and 
 licked the legs of the straddling harbour pier. 
 
 And the sallow sky above—how ugly that 
 was, how imposingly ugly was the universe! 
 And it all mattered so little, for he was 
 sitting here to reflect how little beauty had 
 done for him. 
 
 Why had he wanted to be beautiful then? 
 Because he wanted the mastery of pleasure. 
 
 But he had become so _ beautiful that 
 pleasure had proved inadequate: in other 
 words, he had become too keen a critic of 
 pleasure to enjoy the revels of his lower self. 
 
 But he had not tried, his reason urged 
 him to acknowledge, the full powers of this 
 great gift of beauty. The artist was right. 
 Every one capable of responding to it by 
 
 polar attraction would do so—would come. 
 
A GREAT LIE 229 
 
 The bands of convention would be loosened ; 
 they would be but signs of a vain effort to 
 deter his beauty from conquest. 
 
 Gay women, sad women; ripe women, 
 delicate women ; elfin women, serious women; 
 soulful women, hearty women—all, in their 
 strength or in their weakness, would come. 
 
 They would come if he willed it, as they 
 had come to this sleek and ravening sea 
 when it was shimmering under a_ shining 
 sun: and the shout of the mariner in the 
 lighthouse—it betrayeth!—would not stay 
 them. 
 
 But—there was the rub—his beauty ‘had 
 made him a critic He must think ere the 
 wine touched his lips—dzs zt blood? And, 
 if it were blood, how could he like it? ‘He 
 might drink it, he might lie amiably over 
 the last drop, but how could he like it? 
 
 After all, that was what he had chosen his 
 beauty for, that he might like life enormously. 
 But his life was enormous, and he did not 
 like it. And because he did not like it, he 
 
230 A GREAT LIE 
 
 could not act successfully, and people were 
 wrath with what they saw of clotted clay 
 between the seams of the Great Lie. 
 
 Was there, then, no compensation for this 
 dislike? He summoned the tempter boldly 
 with closed eyes. 
 
 He saw a roomy house with a welcoming 
 porch to it and gardens abutting on a lazy 
 white road. He saw a green lawn in front 
 and his child upon it playing at ball. He 
 saw a pleasant rambling garden at the back, 
 with strawberry beds and currant bushes, and 
 nothing but the fields behind it, with the hills 
 behind them. He saw a copse where the 
 cowslips grew pure with the gold of butter, 
 and rich with the purity of cream, his cow- 
 slips, everybody’s cowslips, uncounted, inex- 
 haustible. He saw them shine in his hands 
 and he saw her lift them up and share their 
 fragrance, and he saw her eyes, calm, deep, 
 soft, wide—the satisfied mother in them. 
 
 And this was all he cared for; this, with 
 
 the changes of seasons upon it; this, with the 
 
A GREAT LIK 231 
 
 hand of Time making it more and more 
 Peal) ©) God, this, and not a lie! .He 
 could not build all this upon a lie. It would 
 be intolerable to live under the weight and 
 insistence of such a lie. 
 
 One for him as Eve was for Adam, one 
 alone who should lull the roaring flames of 
 life into a divine tranquillity, he saw her as 
 he had seen her once and for ‘ever, the 
 woman that he should lie to, lie to, lie to! 
 if he kept her near him. 
 
 Words that would come from her heart, 
 womanly voluble — words that he could 
 not, that she would not, invent— would be 
 answered by the polished surface of an ador- 
 able lie, and it would be enough. To be 
 deceived is so terrible a calamity that no 
 woman alive might choose to be undeceived. 
 In the fact and the ultimatum he would be 
 alone with his lie. 
 
 He opened his eyes upon the first blinding 
 flash of the storm. Well, he had conquered 
 
 for to-day: but how about to-morrow? 
 
232 A GREAT LIE 
 
 Reason sneered at him from her once-shaken 
 but still elevated throne. The roll of thunder 
 and the immediate fall of rain awed him: 
 his abstinence from tea, moreover, had made 
 him feel a little faint. | This combina- 
 tion of fearful reverence and physical dis- 
 comfort imparted to him a desire to go home. 
 This desire was overset by a singular succes- 
 sion of images. The first was that of himself — 
 carrying half the clay of Baker's Gap upon 
 his shoes, in the effort to ascend the cliff; the 
 second was that of the implacable Mrs Gotch 
 meeting him on his return to the fireside ; 
 the third was that of the evangelist seeking 
 in him the signs of accepted salvation; the 
 fourth was that of Old Brewster warding him 
 off from the bare Cross to which no one, 
 consciously lying, dare cling. 
 
 He buried his face in his hands in sudden 
 remorse. As one who has lost a friend is 
 fain to weep at some one of the startling 
 hollows that open in the bereaved home 
 
 and chosen haunts, so Edmund felt the in- 
 
A-GREAT LIE 233 
 
 most pathetic appeal of those desolate waves 
 that the Christ once trod. Ah! he had 
 pretended to feel the touch of that vanished 
 hand, to receive and appropriate that mag- 
 nificent gift of salvation; he had played the 
 paltry hypocrite. Had he not indeed done 
 worse, laughed in his sleeve, to wit? 
 
 Edmund could not remember : his thoughts 
 became chaotic, but through them all the 
 Passion of Christ, tender and human as he 
 had read it in ‘‘The Peep of Day,” flashed 
 before him in this stricken wilderness of 
 stone. 
 
 Some of that old-time loneliness and terror 
 was recreated on this wonderful night, and the 
 pity he felt was akin to faith; and his hatred 
 of self amounted to self-repudiation. 
 
 It was impossible to sit here in such a 
 mood and not think of that other repudiator 
 of self whose self he wore. The subtle egoism 
 that prays, as for mankind, that its selfishness 
 may be indistinguishable in the choice of 
 
 the prayer, was the possession of the 
 
234 A GREAT LIE 
 
 drowned rhymer. Edmund remembered a 
 chime of vowels that might awake an old 
 sorrow or create a new one, and at the same 
 time lull either to asad repose. He repeated 
 the verses softly to himself, with an occasional 
 shudder and shiver, as though the soul of 
 his namesake alternately came and went with 
 
 the sound of the words: 
 
 O! Strength and Light of Heaven 
 Be our Stay, 
 
 Though sins flow from us seven 
 And seventy times a day! 
 
 Thou, God unseen, Who art all-seeing, 
 Shine Truth on us alway ; 
 
 Chase from the chamber of our being, 
 Falsehood, that bird of prey. 
 
 Thou, God, of all good things Creator, 
 All evil words unsay ; 
 
 Be of all deeds the Instigator, 
 Of every light the Ray. 
 
 Let us know Thee, the only Donor 
 Of silver chance or grey, 
 
 And our one everlasting Owner, 
 Though we pay our souls away. 
 
 Though we fare as doth the glutton, 
 And a false god obey, 
 
A GREAT LIE 235 
 
 We implore Thee tread Thy foot on 
 All worms that foul Thy way. 
 
 Sick are we now with sinning, 
 And with our fate are fey, 
 
 Thou, End of our beginning, 
 For Thy sleep we pray. 
 
 Dark whisperers are round about us floating, 
 Wresting our ‘Yea’ and ‘Nay,’ 
 
 Pricking in jest our inmost heart, and noting 
 Each drop of blood we pay. 
 
 For full sleep, oceanic, interspersed 
 With no dreams that betray, 
 
 We thirst, as thirsts for water the accursed 
 Desert—once a bay. 
 
 Give us Thy sleep, though life laid down were wasted. 
 Though wake from sleep of death, no self- 
 
 steeped sinner may, 
 
 For we have loathed the wine-red cup we tasted, 
 And we cry out for a slayer to slay. 
 
 Grant us to know that all our sins are ashes, 
 As we are, even they; 
 
 Reason with that wild hope no longer clashes— 
 Make it ours, we pray. 
 
 “Amen, said Edmund, speaking from the 
 heart. Nor was his brain unresponsive. 
 Although it was aware of the concealed 
 egoism of the prayer, it was not insensible 
 
 to the passion that redeems egoism to the 
 
236 A GREAT LIE 
 
 extent of causing, not wonder that such shafts 
 should fall from so lowering a sky, but that 
 such a soul as this poet’s should have an 
 empyrean at all. “Amen,” said Edmund 
 again; and this time he spoke to bless the 
 spirit of the brink, who (he felt if he dare 
 not suppose it) had moulded him in the one 
 great deformity of his life. 
 
 At that instant Edmund saw the heavens 
 open and shut, and paid for daring to look 
 by living for one moment in an utterly black 
 world. ‘As long as I have the light,” mused 
 the philosopher in Edmund, ‘““why not the 
 eternal dark to see it by?” 
 
 Under the shuddering dome of lilac light, 
 the rain descended with a strength that left a 
 sound of lashing cords against impious ugliness 
 in the gnome-land far away, while the whipped 
 sea leaped to combat, in a panic of wrath or 
 fear, The thunder ran all round the sky 
 like soldiers following the effulgent breastplate 
 of God; and sometimes it seemed to hurl 
 
 itself into the rain that fell as from their 
 
A GREAT LIE 237 
 
 bleeding wounds, sucked in by the insatiable 
 earth and sea. But God was everywhere, 
 and, by that man whom He smote, the fear 
 of the thunder might never be felt. His 
 shining breastplate moved on, and none should 
 follow it continually save the thunder; but when 
 it bloomed like a magic flower for one moment 
 and compelled worship from the weary eyes 
 that would fain have sought the craggy floor 
 of rocks, the thunder seemed to start like an 
 ally from the ambush, and the swaying sea 
 swam as in the carnage of a great battle. For 
 the rain fell with a movement of increasing and 
 unceasing speed, and the thunder and the light- 
 ning pitched into it as it hissed and foamed, 
 were like the mingling wrath and wealth of 
 a superb gambler’s last stake. 
 
 Edmund smiled faintly. That celestial 
 conflict, before which land and sea crouched 
 submissively, was glorious, but why was he 
 here? ‘JI am waiting for a change,” he 
 thought; but he gave no name to the changer. 
 
 He only knew that he was tired already of 
 
238 A GREAT LIE 
 
 the veil of illusion which he wore. He was 
 more than tired, he was unhappy. The old 
 individuality, by whose aid he invoked the past 
 to lend a zest to the present, eternally cried 
 out behind the veil. It was the source of his 
 pride and he prized it, but its preservation 
 involved futility and distress; it repelled 
 friendship and embittered love; it was an 
 obstinate spirit, time-worn, and fatal to reason- 
 able bliss. | 
 
 ‘But you have not conducted the pageant 
 of your beauty in seemly fashion,” urged 
 Reason. ‘In the ignorant stare of suspicion 
 you have lost faith in ego; in unsophisticated 
 calf-love you have lost ego itself; you must 
 recreate your heart in the eyes of intelligent 
 worshippers; you must be demi-god.” 
 
 “Are you a slave to religion,” cried Reason, 
 between the lashes of the water-thongs. ‘“O 
 fool! Morality is a means towards beauty, 
 and you have an absolute beauty without 
 Morality, and it suffices.” 
 
 But the beauty of the shuddering sky 
 
A GREAT LIE 239 
 
 shamed his beauty, which indeed seemed 
 unimportant now, mere symmetry, the beauty 
 of a doll. 
 
 And the great dull pageant of fat and wealthy 
 life in Vanity Fair crept slowly and feebly 
 out of the darkness into the mist before his 
 eyes, and fizzled and went out again. What 
 was it worth?—-so greasy and easy, so shape- 
 less and purposeless, so impertinent, so vulgar. 
 It was not necessary to be beautiful in order 
 to be vulgar; the long-drawn comfort of a 
 flabby life—was it less hateful for being in- 
 sidious ? 
 
 Edmund sat still and shivered. ‘‘ But what 
 shall I change to?” 
 
 There was no revelation for him in the 
 elemental strife, and none in such guesses 
 as he could frame; but to be something 
 through and through, not a glitter over an 
 ash-heap—this was his longing. Into it re- 
 morse did not intrude, nor did memory im- 
 pinge upon it. For the moment he stood 
 
 aloof on an Archimedan plane, and saw him- 
 
240 A GREAT LIE 
 
 self as a creature asking to fulfil its life, not 
 for honour, or gain, or morality, but to live. 
 
 And to live he must change—ay, change. 
 That is why he sat here shivering, arguing 
 by stillness, eloquent by silence. Irresistibly 
 as the distended clouds flung their burden 
 of rain upon land and sea, so he flung out- 
 wards his insatiable desire for change. Here, 
 then, he waited, not for ultimate truth, not 
 for judgment, not for pardon, but for change. 
 
 He waited for the something withheld 
 through all natural convulsions, the something 
 articulate that makes meaning out of storms. 
 
 While attendant on that articulation, 
 Edmund was afraid, and he prayed that 
 he might have strength not to wish for the 
 supine safety of a Great Lie, under the 
 austerities of a great truth. 
 
 Then he looked a last time, and saw a 
 fountain of the dancing lightning and it was 
 gone; and there was a great thirst felt from 
 the depths of the salted sea, and the drenched 
 
 wind whimpered, and the thunder muttered. 
 
A GREAT LIE 241 
 
 His eyes prayed for mercy; he was afraid 
 of the dark. 
 
 Then fell a silver dagger from a dazzling 
 geyser of light: but that silver dagger was 
 never seen by him, and the thunder’s pro-— 
 
 clamation of it was a vain noise. 
 
 In the morning Mrs Weaverling went down 
 to the beach. Thereon she found two bodies. 
 
 One was the body of her crippled son; it 
 was hard to see shape or meaning in it. The 
 other was the body of one charred and scarred 
 by lightning, but recognisably beautiful. 
 Virginia, having heard of it, resumed the 
 
 wearing of black. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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A 
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 Mr. T. Fisher Unwin’s 
 Publications. 
 
 A CYCLOPAEDIA OF ARCHITEC- 
 TURE. In Italy, Greece, and the Levant. 
 Edited by W. P. P. LONGFELLOow. Limited 
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 MADAGASCAR AND THE MALA- 
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 Antananarivo, the Capital: Its Public Buildings, 
 
a MR. 7. FISHER UNWIN'S 
 
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 CLIMBS IN THE NEW ZEALAND 
 ALPS: Being an Account of Discovery 
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 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. From 
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 ISABEL CURTIS-CHOLMELEY in Bermani. 
 
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 With Photogravure Frontispiece, and over 
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 CLIMBING REMINISCENCES OF 
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 This work of the well-known Italian climber is pub- 
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 beautiful scenery of the Dolomites. 
 
 A LIFE SPENT FOR IRELAND. 
 Leaves from the Diary of W. J. O’NEILL 
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 W. E. H. LECKY, and Portrait. Demy 8vo, 
 cloth, 21s. 
 
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 scandalised his family hy becoming a hot Repealer and 
 
4 MR. T. FISHER UNWIN’S 
 
 Disestablisher, He died in 1892 at the age of eighty- 
 five. He was one of O’Connell’s most active lieutenants. 
 His life practically covers the whole Nationalist struggle 
 of the century, and as he kept a Diary pretty regularly 
 one gets a conspectus of the history of Ireland during 
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 It is also crammed full of anecdotes. 
 
 HERE AND THERE MEMORIES. 
 By H.R. N. Demy 8vo, cloth, 16s. 
 
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 the excellent plan of remembering nothing that is not 
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 TWELVE BAD WOMEN. A Com- 
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 IN THE KINGDOM OF THE SHAH. 
 Being the Journey of a Medical man through 
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 F.R.C.S. Demy 8vo. About 264 pp. 37 
 Illustrations. 12s. 
 
 The author, who went to Persia as oculist to the 
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 THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN 
 ELIZABETH. By Martin A. S&S. 
 Hug, F.R.H.S., Editor of the ‘“ Calendar 
 of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth” 
 (Public Record Office). Demy 8vo, cloth, 
 with Portraits, price 12s. 
 
 The author, whois perhaps the highest authority on 
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 extraordinary series of negotiations for her marriage, 
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 THE NEAR EAST. Ready October, 
 1896. By HENRY NORMAN, Author of 
 “ Peoples and Politics of the Far East.” 
 Illustrated. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. 
 Among others the Work includes the following 
 
 Chapters :—‘‘From Mostar to Montenegro.” “The 
 
 Capital of Montenegro.” “Prince and Politics in 
 
 Montenegro: An Interview with Nicholas I.” “The 
 Last Days of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.” 
 
 THE LONDON BURIAL GROUNDS. 
 Notes on their History from the Earliest 
 Times to the Present Day. With numerous 
 Illustrations. By Mrs. Basil HOLMES. 
 Fully Illustrated. Foolscap 4to, cloth, 
 Ios. 6d. net. 
 
 This volume will supply a chapter hitherto missing in 
 
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 herself in the Metropolitan Burial Grounds for many 
 
6 SHILACTED LIST; 
 
 years, and not only gives antiquarian details about those 
 that still exist, and tells much about those whose sites 
 have altogether disappeared, but also supplies valuable 
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 The book is written in a chatty style, and the informa- 
 tion is well up to date. 
 
 MODERN SCIENTIFIC WHIST. By 
 C. D. P. HAMILTON. 1 Vol. Large crown 
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 tions; 268 Diagrams; and 20 Tables. 
 Beautifully printed in red and black, on 
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 Bound in cloth gilt, 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 A digest, by a practical whist-player, that will be 
 appreciated by the beginner for its simplicity and clear- 
 ness, and by the expert for its comprehensiveness. The 
 most exhaustive treatise ever written on the subject of 
 
 Whist. 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GIRO- 
 LAMO SAVONAROLA. By Professor 
 PASQUALE VILLARI. Translated by LINDA 
 VILLARI, New and cheaper edition in I 
 volume. Fully Illustrated. Cloth, large 
 crown, 7s. 6d. 
 
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 With Diagrams. Demy 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
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